BitJazz offers Universal Sheer video codec
updated 10:10 am EST, Fri February 16, 2007
Universal Sheer codec
BitJazz has released new native Intel versions of SheerVideo, its cross-platform real-time lossless software video codec. Claiming to be "fastest video codec in the world," the company says that SheerVideo lets users work twice as fast at half the uncompressed file size--with what it says is "absolutely perfect fidelity to the original video and digitized film." The nondestructive codec leverages the new proprietary Synchromy color-conversion technology for accurate color-space conversion between RGB and Y'CbCr color spaces. The software offers direct lossless support for all professional pixel formats for video (Y'CbCr[A]) and digitized film & synthetic imagery (RGB[A])--both with and without alpha--in high (10-bit) and standard (8-bit) precision. In addition, it offers full-range and video-range, uniformly sampled (4:4:4[:4]) and 1:2 chroma-subsampled (4:2:2[:4]) at any resolution, including HD and SD.
The new SheerVideo for Mac Intel edition native on new Intel Mac systems, while the Universal Binary edition runs both in native Intel mode and in Rosetta PowerPC emulation mode, as well as on any PowerPC running Mac OS X. It also fully supports multiple cores and multiple processors on Intel-based Macs.
The company says that a subsequent release will add MMX+SSE vector optimization for a further boost in performance on Intel processors. Also a Windows Media (AVI) edition for QuickTime (Mac/Win)is also in beta and is scheduled to be released within a month, the company said. BitJazz is currently seeking beta testers for the Windows AVI edition.
SheerVideo is available for Mac and Windows: SheerVideo Reader is free for all platforms, while SheerVideo Pro is available now for $150 and the Universal Binary version is $180. Customers who have already purchased SheerVideo Pro for Mac OS X will receive a complimentary upgrade to the Universal Binary edition upon request.
