SheerVideo - Progress?

I thought I would give an update to my progress with the use of the SheerVideo codec in our animation projects.

I have solved or have reasonable workarounds for almost every problem I originally ran into.

The rendering problem I thought was related to the Kona card was not. It turns out that here are subtle setting in the SheerVideo codec that FCP odes not flag as being different from one another. Therefore FCP thinks that all the clips using a given basic SheerVideo setting are the same and tries to play them in the same sequence, but cannot. I discovered (using the analyze movie tool) that some of my clips were rendered interlaced, and some progressive. FCP did not show them as being different in the sequence, but choked when it tried to play from one kind of clip to another.
This seemed to result from the codec being set to automatic in the progressive/interlaced setup. Re-compressing the interlaced clips with with the codec set to progressive and matching the codec setup in the sequence settings, solved the problem. Now all the footage plays and renders perfectly on system with or without the Kona card.

Also FCP does not know how to render generated elements in real time using SheerVideo. This drove me crazy when I was trying to output to tape until I realized what was going on. The sequence would play perfectly, but would choke when editing to tape if I tried to use any color bars, slates or slugs in the mastering setup. Also any slugs in the sequence would not play either.
This was solved by rendering QT movies of bars and black. and cutting them into the sequence as needed.

So now all is good as we are able to cut and render in the SheerVideo codec as we would any other codec , save for missing RT fx (come on Apple, make it happen) and that we are using less that half the disk space and less than half the data rate that one would expect for 1920X1080 8bYUVp 23.98 footage. This allows us to cut in full rez losslese HD from the get go and I anticipate will save lots of time and money when we go to online.
In fact I took one 5 min sequence on a fW 800 drive to FotoKem (one of the largest film/post labs in LA) to do a test online. I copied the project to their X-Raid and it output flawlessly from their FCP-Kona 3 to HDCam-SR. Just for fun I did a second output using the project on the FW800 drive and again, a perfect output. Pretty amazing to be able to output lossless 1920X1080 HD from a FW800 drive.

One big problem remains however. Since responding to my post here a while ago, I cannot get Andreas, the creator of SheerVideo, to respond to any of my requests for information or support on the website, leaving me to wonder if he has abandon any serious further development. With the Mac Pros replacing the G5s, it is critical that there be a Universal binaries version of the codec available very soon. I am on the verge of deploying the codec studio wide, but I cannot do so unless I know there will be a UB version and some level of product support. The codec has so much to offer, I would hate to have to abandon it.
If you want to check it out -
[bitjazz.com]

Robert Weaver
Director of Post Production
Starz Media - Film Roman

Robert,

Thanks for the info. Very informative post, and I would highly recommend too that Apple gets Sheer fully operable and into the next FCP upgrade. Life would be much easier if we could have one perfect lossless codec for capture, edit and output for both HD and SD that doesn't require expensive storage solutions at high data rates. As you point out, it already exists.

Clay

True. But from the looks of it, it's been abandon by it's author. What a shame. A truly remarkable codec.

Robert Weaver
Director of Post Production
Starz Media - Film Roman

I had some difficulty raising Andreas too but he has resurfaced and sent apologies for not replying - he said that they had rebuilt there site and moved to another server, things would be back to normal now. He was very genuine, so I think you can sigh with relief. It is a great codec and he knows it.
Philip

Great to hear you got a hold of him. I hope I hear from him as well.

Robert Weaver
Director of Post Production
Starz Media - Film Roman

For those who haven't heard yet, in February we released SheerVideo for Mac Intel and SheerVideo for Mac Universal Binary. The Intel code isn't vectorized yet for MMX+SSE as the G4 and G5 edition is for AltiVec, so it isn't as fast as it will be, but the upgrade to the vectorized version will be free, and in the meantime the functionality is all there and working.

Andreas Wittenstein
BitJazz Inc.
[www.bitjazz.com]