| | |
BitJazz SheerVideo FAQ Uses: Processing
Is SheerVideo useful for archival?
Is SheerVideo useful for broadcasting?
Is SheerVideo useful for capture?
Is SheerVideo useful for distribution?
Is SheerVideo useful for editing?
Is SheerVideo useful for interchange?
Is SheerVideo useful for playback?
Is SheerVideo useful for postproduction?
Is SheerVideo useful for production?
Is SheerVideo useful for storage?
Is SheerVideo useful for transmission?
Is SheerVideo useful for capture? Absolutely. SheerVideo is ideal for capture.
With SheerVideo, you can encode digitized video data on the fly,
stream it to a cheaper storage device than you could with uncompressed video data,
and have it take up less than half the space.
When capturing from a deck, SheerVideo can encode faster than real time if your deck and capture card support it.
In a portable camera, SheerVideo can extend battery life, reduce heat dissipation requirements,
reduce storage costs and reduce transmission bandwidth compared to uncompressed or DigiBeta.
For example, SheerVideo makes it possible to transmit the highest-definition HD over a single FireWire 800 link.
Moreover, SheerVideo supports all popular 8-bit digitizing formats,
including RGB, Y'CbCr 4:4:4, and Y'CbCr 4:2:2.
top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for transmission? Yes, SheerVideo is best for transmission of studio-quality and broadcast-quality video.
For studio-quality real-world footage, SheerVideo takes half the bandwidth of uncompressed video,
and SheerVideo takes half the time to transmit it across just about any channel.
Moreover SheerVideo directly supports 8-bit studio-quality formats,
including both RGB[A] 8b and Y'CbCr[A] 8b 4:4:4[:4],
both progressive and interlaced, at any resolution.
For real-world broadcast-quality video, SheerVideo takes about the same bandwidth
as traditional approximating codecs such as Photo JPEG and Motion JPEG,
but SheerVideo is perfect-fidelity,
and SheerVideo can compress, transmit, and decompress on the fly
3 times as fast as these other codecs.
Moreover, SheerVideo also provides direct support for all popular Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 broadcast formats,
both interlaced and progressive, at arbitrary resolution.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for storage? Yes, SheerVideo is best for storage of studio-quality and broadcast-quality video.
For studio-quality footage of real-world imagery, SheerVideo takes half the space of uncompressed video,
and SheerVideo takes half the time to store and retrieve it to and from almost all storage media.
And SheerVideo directly supports 8-bit studio-quality formats,
including both RGB[A] 8b and Y'CbCr[A] 8b 4:4:4[:4],
both progressive and interlaced, at all resolutions.
For real-world broadcast-quality video, SheerVideo takes about the same amount of space
as traditional approximating codecs such as Photo JPEG and Motion JPEG,
but SheerVideo is perfect-fidelity,
and SheerVideo can compress and store on the fly
4 times as fast as these other codecs,
as well as retrieving and decompressing faster.
SheerVideo also provides direct support for all popular Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 broadcast formats,
both interlaced and progressive, at arbitrary resolution.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for playback? Yes, SheerVideo is the best codec for real-time playback of real-world imagery.
At high resolution, SheerVideo has the smoothest playback, because
SheerVideo's decoder is faster than any other codec,
whether perfect-fidelity or high-quality approximating.
SheerVideo is even generally twice as fast as the fastest uncompressed codecs,
because SheerVideo beats the disk access and bus transmission bottlenecks.
For uncompressed video, especially, SheerVideo is the best choice,
because SheerVideo cuts the file size and retrieval rate in half as well as speeding up decoding rate.
And SheerVideo supports all popular uncompressed playback formats, including RGB 8b, Y'CbCr 8b 4:4:4, and Y'CbCr 4:2:2 formats.
However, for it's generally preferable to leave consumer-quality video, such as DV, MPEG, or Sorenson,
in compressed form, because SheerVideo would take so much more space.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for editing? Definitely. SheerVideo is perfect for editing broadcast-quality and studio-quality video work.
In editing, perfect-fidelity coding is critical, since even very small very errors will,
after multiple editing passes, accumulate to result in so much generational loss that the video turns to mud.
For broadcast-quality editing, SheerVideo is around 4 times as fast as
the fastest traditional broadcast-quality codecs used for proxies and intermediate files in video editing,
such as Photo JPEG and Motion JPEG.
And, unlike other broadcast-quality options, which typically lose 1 bit of information per sample
even at their highest quality setting, SheerVideo is perfect-fidelity.
Note that SheerVideo supports all popular Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 broadcast formats,
both interlaced and progressive, at any resolution.
For studio-quality editing, SheerVideo is typically twice as fast,
because SheerVideo is faster than just about all storage and transmission devices,
yet cuts the storage and transmission rates in less than half.
Moreover, SheerVideo also cuts storage requirements in half,
and can make do with slower, cheaper storage devices.
And SheerVideo supports all popular 8-bit studio-quality editing formats,
including several RGB[A] 8b and Y'CbCr[A] 8b 4:4:4[:4] formats,
both progressive and interlaced, at any resolution.
However, for consumer-quality editing, SheerVideo involves a tradeoff.
SheerVideo compresses nearly 7 times faster than DV for Y'CbCr 8bv 4:2:2,
and SheerVideo compresses with perfect fidelity,
contrasted with DV's average error rate of 3.75 b/S (bits per sample).
However, SheerVideo compresses 60% less than DV,
and SheerVideo does not directly support the Y'CbCr 8b 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 formats used in DV.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for interchange? Yes, SheerVideo is ideal for interchange.
Whenever you need to move video from one application, platform, or station to another for further processing,
SheerVideo cuts the file size, bandwidth requirement, and transmission time in half,
while maintaining perfect quality.
A couple other perfect-fidelity codecs, such as PhotoJazz,
may cut the size and bandwidth a little further than SheerVideo,
but they take at least 50 times as long to do so.
Furthermore, SheerVideo supports all popular 8-bit uncompressed interchange formats,
including several RGB[A] 8b, Y'CbCr[A] 8b 4:4:4[:4], and Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 formats,
both progressive and interlaced, at any resolution.
The free SheerVideo Reader
is an especially attractive feature for interchange.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for archival? Yes, SheerVideo is ideal for archival of uncompressed video.
With SheerVideo, you can take your uncompressed video, Sheer-encode it,
and archive it to a storage medium
in half the time and half the space of the uncompressed video.
SheerVideo compresses faster than any other codec,
yet SheerVideo compresses real-world footage to within a few percent of codecs that take 60 times as long.
SheerVideo compresses with absolutely perfect fidelity,
an essential feature for archival.
SheerVideo supports both RGB[A] for film and CGI archival,
and numerous Y'CbCr[A] formats for studio-quality and broadcast-quality video archival.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for production? Absolutely. SheerVideo is ideal for production.
Compared to uncompressed video,
SheerVideo halves transmission time between servers and workstations,
halves storage and retrieval time to and from disk,
halves transmission bandwidth requirements over the Ethernet and local buses,
and halves storage size on disk and tape.
All while maintaining perfect fidelity.
Moreover, SheerVideo supports both RGB[A] formats for CGI and digitized film production,
and Y'CbCr[A] 8b 4:4:4[:4] formats for video production.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for postproduction? Unquestionably. SheerVideo is perfect for postproduction,
because SheerVideo maintains perfect fidelity through any number of filters, effects, and other processing stages.
At the same time, SheerVideo doubles input & output speed for the video streams from and to disk,
and doubles storage capacity by cutting uncompressed video file sizes in half.
And SheerVideo supports all popular 8-bit postproduction formats,
including RGB[A] 8b, Y'CbCr[A] 8b 4:4:4[:4], and Y'CbCr 8b 4:2:2 formats,
both progressive and interlaced, at arbitrary resolution.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for broadcasting? SheerVideo is useful in broadcast production and for broadcast archival,
but it is not very useful for actual broadcasting.
In broadcasting, minimizing bandwidth is more critical than maintaining quality and maximizing coding speed.
Viewers are generally willing to put up with a great deal of picture degradation
in return for being able to view the footage in real time at reasonable cost,
especially since, in a broadcast, each frame of video is visible for only a fraction of a second.
Nevertheless, SheerVideo supports all the popular Y'CbCr 4:2:2 broadcast formats.
previous | top | next
Is SheerVideo useful for distribution? No, SheerVideo is generally not useful for distribution.
In distribution, minimizing file size is more important than maintaining fidelity and maximizing coding speed.
An approximating codec such as Sorenson or MPEG,
which can compress video way further than possible with a perfect fidelity,
is more appropriate for distribution.
If we've left out an important process in which you've found SheerVideo useful, we'd love to hear about it.
Please drop us a note in our Suggestion Box,
or send us an e-mail to suggestionsbitjazz.com
previous | top
|
|
|