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BitJazz
SheerVideo FAQ
Uses: Approximating Codecs
Is SheerVideo useful for DV or DV-25?
Is SheerVideo useful for DV-50?
Is SheerVideo useful for DigiBeta?
Is SheerVideo useful for MPEG-2?
Is SheerVideo useful for MPEG-4 or DivX?
Is SheerVideo useful for Motion JPEG?
Is SheerVideo useful for Photo JPEG?
Is SheerVideo useful for Sorenson?
 Is SheerVideo useful for Photo JPEG?
Yes. If speed and quality are important to you, then
SheerVideo is the ideal replacement for Photo JPEG.
SheerVideo is much faster
than Apple's blazingly fast implementation of Photo JPEG,
yet SheerVideo is perfect-fidelity,
while Photo JPEG always significantly degrades the image,
even at its Best quality setting.
Moreover, SheerVideo is comparable in power to top-quality Photo JPEG.
And unlike Photo JPEG, SheerVideo supports alpha compression.
For real-world Y'CbCr 8bv 4:2:2 video, for example,
SheerVideo compresses 4 times as fast (113 MiB/s on a single-CPU 1 GHz Mac G4)
as Photo JPEG (27 MiB/s) at its Best setting,
and decompresses more than twice as fast (88 MiB/s) as Photo JPEG (38 MiB/s).
Yet while SheerVideo has zero error,
Photo JPEG averages 0.38 b/S (bits per sample) error.
Moreover, SheerVideo averages 15% more powerful (2.43)
than Best-quality Photo JPEG (2.11).
Likewise for real-world Y'CbCr 8bv 4:4:4 video,
SheerVideo compresses 4 times as fast (114 MiB/s)
as Photo JPEG (28 MiB/s) at its Best quality
and decompresses 3 times as fast (106 versus 38 MiB/s).
Yet while SheerVideo has 0.00 b/S error,
Photo JPEG A and B average 0.38 b/S error.
And SheerVideo is on average 15% more powerful (2.88)
than Best-quality Photo JPEG (2.46).
For real-world RGB 8b video, too,
SheerVideo compresses 4 times as fast (110 MiB/s)
as best-quality Photo JPEG (28 MiB/s)
and decompresses 3 times as fast (101 versus 39 MiB/s).
Again, while SheerVideo has 0.00 b/S error,
Photo JPEG averages 0.70 b/S error.
Yet SheerVideo is on average only 13% less powerful (2.20)
than Best-quality Photo JPEG (2.52).
On the other hand, if compression power is more important to you than speed and quality,
then Photo JPEG, as an approximating codec,
can obviously compress much further than any perfect-fidelity codec can,
merely by turning down the quality and increasing the error rate.
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Is SheerVideo useful for Motion JPEG? Yes. If speed and quality are important to you, then
SheerVideo is the perfect replacement for Motion JPEG A and B.
SheerVideo is much faster
than Apple's blisteringly fast implementation of Motion JPEG,
yet SheerVideo is perfect-fidelity,
while Motion JPEG always significantly degrades the image,
even at its Best quality setting.
Even so, SheerVideo is comparable in power to Motion JPEG.
And unlike Motion JPEG, SheerVideo supports alpha compression.
For real-world Y'CbCr 8bv 4:2:2 video, for example,
SheerVideo compresses 4 times as fast (113 MiB/s on a single-CPU 1 GHz Mac G4)
as Motion JPEG (26 MiB/s) at its Best setting,
and decompresses nearly 3 times as fast (88 MiB/s) as M-JPEG (35 MiB/s).
Yet while SheerVideo has zero error,
Motion JPEG A and B average 0.38 b/S (bits per sample) error.
Moreover, SheerVideo averages 26% more powerful (2.43)
than Best-quality Motion JPEG A and B (1.92).
And for real-world Y'CbCr 8bv 4:4:4 video,
SheerVideo compresses 3 times as fast (114 MiB/s)
as Motion JPEG (36 MiB/s) at its Best quality
and decompresses twice as fast (106 versus 47 MiB/s).
Yet while SheerVideo has 0.00 b/S error,
Motion JPEG A and B average 0.80 b/S error.
And SheerVideo is on average 1% less powerful (2.88)
than Best-quality Motion JPEG A (2.88) and B (2.89).
Likewise, for real-world RGB 8b video,
SheerVideo compresses 3 times as fast (110 MiB/s)
as best-quality Motion JPEG (36 MiB/s)
and decompresses twice as fast (101 versus 48 MiB/s).
Again, while SheerVideo has 0.00 b/S error,
Motion JPEG A and B average 1.21 b/S error.
Yet SheerVideo is on average only 25% less powerful (2.20)
than Best-quality Motion JPEG A (2.93) and B (2.94).
On the other hand, if compression power is more important to you than speed and quality,
then Motion JPEG, as an approximating codec,
can obviously compress much further than possible for any perfect-fidelity codec,
just by turning down the quality and hence turning up the error rate.
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Is SheerVideo useful for DigiBeta? Yes.
SheerVideo provides an average of 21% greater compression power (2.43)
than Sony's legendary-quality
Digital Betacam ("DigiBeta") codec (2.00).
What's more, SheerVideo's perfect fidelity codec,
by truly compressing all the data with zero information loss,
provides much higher quality than DigiBeta's DCT-based approximating codec,
which "compresses" the data by throwing away information.
Furthermore, whereas DigiBeta requires expensive hardware for editing,
SheerVideo runs in software, and runs faster than real-time
So for editing, SheerVideo is faster, takes up less space, and costs far less.
In addition, SheerVideo supports fully sampled chroma and alpha, Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4],
for superior editing accuracy.
For video cameras, especially portable camcorders,
SheerVideo is the perfect replacement for DigiBeta.
SheerVideo not only provides superior compression power and supreme quality,
but also requires less energy, less space, less heat dissipation,
a smaller battery, and a smaller recording unit than DigiBeta.
On the other hand, DigiBeta has a constant recording speed,
while SheerVideo requires a variable tape speed.
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Is SheerVideo useful for DV-50? Rather.
DV-50 only compresses 28% more than SheerVideo,
but it has a far higher error rate, whereas SheerVideo is perfect-fidelity.
This is especially important in video editing,
where the error from multiple editing in DV-50 format passes
accumulates on each decompression and each recompression,
worsening from generation to generation.
SheerVideo, in contrast, has zero generational loss.
SheerVideo also compresses much faster than DV-50.
In addition, SheerVideo supports Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] video,
with chroma and alpha represented at each pixel,
for pixel-accurate editing and effects.
In video cameras, especially portable camcorders,
SheerVideo is the obvious next step beyond DV-50.
SheerVideo not only provides unsurpassable quality
at only slightly lower compression power,
but also requires less energy, less circuit space, and less heat dissipation than DV-50.
However, unlike DV-50, SheerVideo requires a variable tape speed.
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Is SheerVideo useful for DV or DV-25? Not very.
As a perfect-fidelity codec that truly compresses data by packing all of it more efficiently,
SheerVideo can't compete in compression power with approximating codecs such as DV-25,
which "compress" the data by throwing a lot of it away.
Thus SheerVideo compresses 60% less (2.43 for Y'CbCr 8bv 4:2:2) than DV (6.6).
Furthermore, the editing systems used by DV editors typically only support DV.
However, if you do have applications that support other QuickTime codecs,
then SheerVideo provides the advantage of perfect fidelity,
meaning it has 0.00 b/S (bits per sample) of error,
compared to DV's average 3.75 b/S error.
With multiple editing passes, DV's error will rapidly accumulate, turning the video to mud,
in contrast to SheerVideo's zero generational loss.
In addition, SheerVideo supports Y'CbCr[A] 8bv 4:4:4[:4] video,
with chroma and alpha at every pixel, for superior editing facility.
SheerVideo also compresses 5 times as fast as DV.
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Is SheerVideo useful for MPEG-2? Yes.
SheerVideo provides faster and slimmer input files for MPEG-2,
which is particularly useful if you're experimenting with different MPEG-2 compression-parameter settings
to obtain the best trade-off between compression power and quality.
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Is SheerVideo useful for MPEG-4 or DivX? Maybe.
MPEG-4 contains a lot of different functionalities, including virtual-reality markup language (VRML).
But if you're just using MPEG-4 (one brand of which is known as DivX) for straight video compression,
then SheerVideo can provide faster and slimmer input files,
which is particularly useful if you're playing with different compression-parameter settings
to optimize the trade-off between compression power and quality.
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Is SheerVideo useful for Sorenson? Yes.
SheerVideo provides faster and slimmer input files for Sorenson Video,
which is particularly useful if you're manipulating Sorenson's compression-parameter settings
to find the best compromise between compression power and quality.
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