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BitJazz
SheerVideo FAQ
Power: Other Perfect-Fidelity Codecs
Is SheerVideo more powerful than PNG?
Is SheerVideo more powerful than StuffIt?
Is SheerVideo more powerful than Zip?
Is SheerVideo more powerful than the Animation codec?
Is SheerVideo more powerful than the Microcosm codec?
Is SheerVideo more powerful than the PhotoJazz codec?
Is SheerVideo more powerful than uncompressed, Apple's None codec, or Apple's Component Video codec?
 Is SheerVideo more powerful than uncompressed, Apple's None codec, or Apple's Component Video codec?
Yes. Using an uncompressed Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 codec such as Apple's Component Video codec
to encode RGB 8b or Y'CbCr 8b 4:4:4 video compresses the data by a factor of 1.5 by throwing away half the chroma samples.
For real-world RGB 8b video, SheerVideo RGB 8b (2.20)
is more than 46% more powerful than any uncompressed Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 codec (1.5);
and for Y'CbCr 8b 4:4:4, SheerVideo Y'CbCr 8b 4:4:4 (2.84)
is more than 89% more powerful than any uncompressed Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 codec (1.5).
Moreover, the matched SheerVideo codec retains perfect fidelity, whereas Apple's Component Video codec, for example,
degrades real-world RGB 8b images by over 3.8 bits per sample.
In addition, SheerVideo compresses 15% faster than Component Video.
When using an uncompressed codec matching the source video format, the compression power is 1.0, meaning no compression at all.
(Hence the name "uncompressed".)
In these cases, SheerVideo is obviously much more powerful than uncompressed.
For example, for real-world RGB 8b video, SheerVideo RGB 8b (2.20)
is on average 120% more powerful than Apple's None codec (1.00);
and for Y'CbCr 8bw 4:2:2 video, SheerVideo Y'CbCr 8bw 4:2:2 (2.31)
is on average 131% more powerful than Apple's Component Video codec (1.00).
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Is SheerVideo more powerful than Zip? Yes, for real-world imagery, SheerVideo (2.20) is more than 35% more powerful than Zip (1.62).
For poster-quality imagery, however, such as title screens and 2-dimensional animations with solid color or smooth gradients,
Zip tends to be much more powerful.
Unlike Zip, SheerVideo is available as a QuickTime codec for convenient access in video applications.
Moreover, SheerVideo encodes more than 110 times faster (110 MiB/s on a 1-CPU 1 GHz Mac G4)
than Aladdin System's fast Zip utility implementation (0.92 MiB/s).
On the other hand, Zip is a general-purpose compression utility that can compress all kinds of files,
whereas SheerVideo is specifically designed for uncompressed video.
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Is SheerVideo more powerful than StuffIt? Yes, SheerVideo (2.20) is more than 5% more powerful than StuffIt (2.09) for real-world footage.
However, for poster-quality imagery, such as title screens and 2-dimensional animations with solid color or smooth gradients,
StuffIt is generally much more powerful.
In contrast to StuffIt, SheerVideo is available as a QuickTime codec, so that it can be used from within video applications.
What's more, SheerVideo encodes more than 160 times faster (110 MiB/s on a single-CPU 1 GHz Mac G4)
than Aladdin System's StuffIt utility (0.67 MiB/s).
On the other hand, SheerVideo only compresses uncompressed video,
whereas StuffIt, as a general-purpose utility, is designed to compress all kinds of data.
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Is SheerVideo more powerful than the Animation codec? Yes, for real-world RGB imagery, SheerVideo (2.20) is over 100% more powerful than
Apple's Animation codec (1.06), which hardly compresses photo-quality images at all.
But for poster-quality imagery with large solid-color areas, such as the traditional 2-D animation for which it's designed and named,
the Animation codec is usually much more powerful.
Note that SheerVideo encodes 2.5 times as fast as Animation.
And, unlike Animation, SheerVideo supports native video formats as well as RGB[A].
On the other hand, Animation also supports low-quality image formats such as indexed-color images.
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Is SheerVideo more powerful than PNG? Yes, for photo-quality RGB pictures, SheerVideo (2.20) is more than 20% more powerful than PNG (1.80).
For poster-quality content, however, such as title screens and 2-dimensional animations,
PNG is generally much more powerful.
Moreover, SheerVideo encodes 60 times faster than Apple's
remarkably fast PNG codec implementation.
And where PNG only supports RGB[A], SheerVideo also supports native video formats.
On the other hand, PNG provides excellent support for low-quality image formats such as indexed-color images,
which SheerVideo does not.
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Is SheerVideo more powerful than the Microcosm codec? No. For real-world RGB imagery, SheerVideo (2.20) is 3% less powerful than
Digital Anarchy's
Microcosm codec.
However, an extra 3% compression is a small concession to make
for SheerVideo's 70-fold (RAM-to-RAM) speed advantage over Microcosm.
In addition, in contrast to Microcosm, which only supports RGB[A], SheerVideo also supports native video formats.
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Is SheerVideo more powerful than the PhotoJazz codec? No. For real-world RGB imagery, SheerVideo (2.20) is 11% less powerful than
BitJazz's
PhotoJazz codec.
However, in most situations, that extra 11% compression is easily outweighed
by the fact that SheerVideo is 50 times faster than PhotoJazz.
Also note that, unlike PhotoJazz, SheerVideo supports native video formats as well as RGB[A].
On the other hand, PhotoJazz also supports many other formats,
such as RGB 16b, CMYK 8b & 16b, multispectral, multitone, monochrome, and multiple alpha channels and spot colors.
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