BitJazz
SheerVideo
Known Problems

• Unless you enable RGB[A] 8bf input by choosing One-way Mode and Best Conversion in the Sheer Settings dialog, some applications will not let you use any Sheer Y'CbCr[A] encoders except Sheer Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:4:4[:4]. For unfortunate historical reasons, QuickTime's standard video Compression Settings dialog requires RGB 8b encoding support in order to display a preview image for Y'CbCr[A] encoders, and otherwise sometimes erases the preview image area in the wrong place on the display, or draws random garbage in the preview area. This problem is due to a limitation in QuickTime, and does not affect the performance of SheerVideo.
• Exporting to any format from a 16 bits-per-channel project in After Effects Pro does not work. Use the Render Queue and Output Module instead.
• Adobe Premiere darkens or lightens the left 3/4 of Sheer images to a degree differing between the Project window and the Preview pane; unrendered and rendered images; Mac and Windows; and the video color standard (stored in the value of the 'nclc' field in the 'colr' image descritpion extension). We are waiting for Adobe to fix this problem.
• When playing Sheer or other compressed clips or sequences with a video card such as the DeckLink or Kona, Final Cut Pro decompresses synchronously, waiting for each frame to complete before processing the next frame, resulting in very slow playback, especially on a multiprocessor system. To avoid this, set 'View > External Video' to 'Off'.
• QuickTime for Windows issues an error -157 "Invalid pixel depth" when exporting 'v210' to any Sheer codec. To work around this for Sheer Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4], you must check the Allow Transcoding box in the Compression Settings dialog. For other Sheer codecs, there is no workaround. We are waiting for Apple to fix this problem.
• Exporting nonstandard widths of uncompressed 'v210' or Sheer Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4] to Blackmagic 10 Bit causes the left edge to be repeated at the right edge. This is due to a bug in Blackmagic's codec. On Mac OS X, use Final Cut Pro's 'Uncompressed 10-bit 422' codec instead.
• Exporting odd widths of uncompressed 'v210' or Sheer Y'CbCr[A] 10bv 4:2:2[:4] to Apple's Uncompressed 10-bit 422 codec results in a solid green image. This is due to a bug in Apple's codec.
• Apple's Compressor utility only exports to Sheer 10b codecs if the output Geometry matches the source and if no Filters are selected. This is due to a limitation in Compressor.

Resolved Problems

• The radio buttons were miswired in the Sheer Settings dialog in SheerVideo Pro for Mac UB in Intel mode. In SheerVideo Pro for Mac UB, the Sheer Settings dialog-box resources are shared between PPC and Intel, even though they should have different numbers of radio buttons because the Mac Intel edition does not yet offer vectorized code. So the radio buttons were wired up wrong for the Universal Binary edition when running in native Intel mode. This problem was fixed in v2.6.2.3 by turning on the Scalar|Vectorized option in Intel mode even though it is not yet functional.
• Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 and QuickTime 7.1.2 cannot handle more than 64 codecs, whereas SheerVideo alone currently comprises 8 encoders, 8 decoders, and 5 transcoders. Having too many codecs installed can cause Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 to crash on launch. Other applications relying on QuickTime may crash or issue spurious "codec not found" warnings. In other cases, some codecs just don't show up in the list of encoders available, or attempting to play back an encoded file yields a blank window. This problem was fixed in Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 and QuickTime 7.1.5.
• When capturing from Blackmagic Design DeckLink to SheerVideo in Final Cut, HD 1920 x 1080 frames come out as 960 x 540. As reported by Blackmagic Design, Final Cut fails to call 'VDSetPreferredImageDimensions()' to inform the DeckLink 'VDIG' driver of the image resolution, so the driver has to infer the image dimensions from the size of the capture window. However, Final Cut sizes the capture window to half-size when recording high definition, which is indistinguishable from setting the capture dimensions to 960x540. Blackmagic Design handles HD codecs as special cases, and always records these at full HD frame size even if the capture window is half-sized. This was due to Final Cut's failure to communicate the actual image dimensions to the DeckLink driver. The latest version of Blackmagic Design's DeckLink driver works around this problem.
• QuickTime Player Pro 6.5 and earlier could not convert between SheerVideo and certain other codecs, including MPEG-4 Video. This was due to QuickTime wiring bugs that were fixed in QuickTime 7.0.
• In After Effects, when exporting or outputting to Sheer Y'CbCr[A] codecs, QuickTime 7.0 did the color conversion from RGB[A] itself, rather than letting SheerVideo's more-accurate Synchromy color converter take care of it. SheerVideo 2.2.6 has a workaround for this problem.
• In Final Cut Pro, playing SheerVideo clips or sequences at 100% or 50% resolution with SheerVideo 2.2.4 and earlier ignored the codec's preferred pixel format and insisted on receiving 'ARGB' pixels, resulting in very slow playback, due to a bug in QuickTime 7.0. SheerVideo 2.2.5 has a workaround for this problem.
• When converting to or from the 'v210' (Y'CbCr 10bv 4:2:2) pixel format, QuickTime 6.5 and earlier computed the row width incorrectly and allocated too little memory for the image, causing crashes and hangs. This problem was fixed in QuickTime 7.0. To avoid crashes in prior versions of QuickTime, SheerVideo detects this condition and returns error code -2034 (internalQuickTimeError).
• In QuickTime Player Pro 6.5, exporting high-precision material to Apple's Uncompressed 10-bit 422 codec used the low-precision 8-bit '2vuy' pixel format instead of a high-precision pixel format such as 'v210' or 'v216'. This bug was fixed in QuickTime Player Pro 7.0.
• Apple QuickTime Player Pro 6.5 and earlier didn't do geometry when encoding Y'CbCr[A] pixels. This is due to a limitation that was fixed in QuickTime Player Pro 7.0.
• In QuickTime 6.3 and earlier, captured SheerVideo had to be re-exported to the same Sheer format for smooth playback. This problem was fixed in QuickTime 6.5.
• In QuickTime 6.4 and earlier, the Dual G5 PowerMac encoded and decoded SheerVideo as quickly as expected in RAM, but did not display SheerVideo smoothly. This problem was fixed in QuickTime 6.5.