BitJazz Announces Mac Intel & Universal Binary Editions of
SheerVideo, Cross-Platform Real-Time Nondestructive Video Codec for
Professional Film and Video Production and Postproduction
SAN FRANCISCO, California – January 12, 2007 — At Macworld today,
BitJazz Inc. announces the imminent availability of the Mac+Intel and
Mac Universal Binary editions of SheerVideo, their acclaimed
cross-platform powerful real-time lossless software video codec.
Introduced in 2003 as the fastest video codec in the world,
SheerVideo lets users work twice as fast at half the uncompressed
file size, with perfect fidelity to the original video and digitized
film. The ultrafast nondestructive power of SheerVideo saves time,
space, and money in professional video and film production and
archival workflows, while faithfully preserving every single bit of
image information.
Since the addition in 2004 of BitJazz’s unique Synchromy
color-conversion technology, hailed as the most accurate color-space
converter in the world, SheerVideo has let users convert between RGB
and Y’CbCr color spaces completely nondestructively — a feat
previously considered impossible. This means that one can edit video
footage in applications designed for film and CGI, and edit film &
CGI footage in video applications, repeatedly, without any loss of
image information. With its direct lossless support for all
professional pixel formats for digitized film & synthetic imagery
(RGB[A]) and video (Y’CbCr[A]), both with and without alpha, in high
(10-bit) and standard (8-bit) precision, 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 (high definition) and SD (standard
definition), NTSC, PAL, & SECAM; 4:3 & 16:9, progressive and
interlaced, SheerVideo has become the most versatile codec in the
world, directly supporting far more formats than any other codec.
The new SheerVideo for Mac+Intel edition lets SheerVideo run in
native mode on the 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. These
products join the existing lineup of editions for PC+Windows, Mac OS
X, and Mac OS 8|9. The initial release, scheduled for the end of
January, will take full advantage of multiple cores and multiple
processors on Mac+Intel platforms, as SheerVideo already does for
Mac+PowerPC, where it also takes advantage of the AltiVec vector
processing capabiliites of the G4 and G5. A later release will add
MMX+SSE vector optimization for a further boost in performance on
Intel processors. Designed to facilitate the interchangeability of
studio-quality video, film, and CGI image formats in professional
video and film production and postproduction, SheerVideo permits
editors to switch between their preferred tools on their preferred
platforms with unrivalled speed, quality, and flexibility.
“With its speed, power, perfect quality, and flexibility, SheerVideo
has everything going for it. This codec should take over the world.”
– Michael Horton, LAFCPUG
price and availability
SheerVideo is available for Mac and Windows at
http://www.bitjazz.com/ . SheerVideo Reader is free for all
platforms. SheerVideo Pro is available now for $149 for Mac OS X+PPC,
Windows+PC, or Mac OS 8|9, and can be downloaded and evaluated for
free for 20 days of use. SheerVideo Pro for Mac OS X+Intel will
likewise be available for $149, and SheerVideo Pro for Mac OS X
Universal will be available for $189. Customers who purchase
SheerVideo Pro for Mac OS X this month or who have already purchased
it will receive a complimentary upgrade to the Universal Binary
edition. BitJazz is currently seeking beta testers for the new
editions. Available now for QuickTime on both Mac and Windows, a
Windows Media (AVI) edition is also in beta and will be released soon.
about BitJazz Inc.
BitJazz Inc. is the market leader in lossless image compression and
conversion technology. The company first made headlines in 1998 with
PhotoJazz, a revolutionary nondestructive image codec whose
compression power of 2.5 for real-world imagery leapfrogged PNG’s
previous record of 1.8. SheerVideo was launched in July 2003. For
additional company and product information, please visit
http://www.bitjazz.com/.
BitJazz, SheerVideo, Synchromy, and PhotoJazz are trademarks of
BitJazz Inc. All other product names and company names are trademarks
of their respective owners. Patents pending on SheerVideo and
Synchromy technologies.