How To code ALPHA channel in your Video-Editing sofware

Ruud · Post by **Ruud** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 13:18

What do you think about the codec on http://www.bitjazz.com ?

And Bart & Edwin! Could you make resolume support 8 bit Alpha channel or do would it result in slower framerates or somethng...

The difference between 8 bit and 1 bit are huge, so it would improve performance 256 x times!

Cheers

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:59

This SheerVideoâ¢ Pro (from bitjazz) sure seems interesting, I will do some testing with it, though it seems hard to believe it will be faster than indeo. Their marketing-guru-talk sure makes you wonder

Greetz,
Niels / Sense

Sense · Post by **Sense** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 03:51

Ok, did some testing on the Sheervideo codec. First of all it's based on Quicktime technology, and so makes .mov's

File size of one of our clips:

indeo 5.2 - 900kb
sheervideo 2.2.3 with 8bit alpha - 17mb!!
There are like 6 diff. sheervideo codecs avail. Have to find out their differences yet, only 2 seem to have alpha (8/10bit)

Resolume plays the file extremly well ! played 1 file three times (so it reads the file 3 times, which doesnt increase speed:) with effects and alpha channel, at a reasonable speed of 22fps. around 19 with effects. Resolume ignored the alpha channel, so you see the background color selected.

Loading the file back into After Effects gave me a pure alpha channel.

The codec seems non-destructive!! Which is awesome, but aint to strange looking at the file sizes, but speed doesn't seem too be compromised.

All in all, this quick test gave some great results, will dive into it deeper,
Bart & Edwin, if it aint to much effort it could be awesome to build in alpha support into resolume. But this perhaps a bit early to tell. This really looks interesting, perhaps we should meet about it

Greetz for now, time for bed,

Niels / Sense

[Edited on 6-3-2005 by Sense]

Post by **bart** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 15:39

i,m going to have a look at the sheervideo codec, i hope it wil be good!

Sense · Post by **Sense** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 00:31

If the installer fails, just do a manual install, works fine

Cheerz.
Niels/Sense

Post by **bart** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 12:36

did some tests and it works but it,s not great, not great at all. The problem is the filesizes it produces. A 4 second clip at 400x300 resolution is 13.5 Mb, compared to 2,6 Mb for the same clip with mjpeg @ 80%!

Because of this big filesize playback is not very fast because it is slow to get all this data off the harddrive.

so i do not think it is a good idea to use this codec ;-(

DAS BEN · Post by **DAS BEN** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 10:46

Hi sense

Where did you get indeo 5.2 ? i am still using 5.1 and sometimes its not really satifying.

greetings das ben

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 13:12

Bart, Like I said I did some quick testing, but for some reason, resolume didn't quirk about the file size?! I will do some more testing on this. And the quality is superb.

Das Ben > indeo 5.2 is the XP version, are you using XP or win2k?

DAS BEN · Post by **DAS BEN** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 14:11

mein arbeitscomputer lÃ¤uft auf win 2000 und resolume auf auf xp. aber normalerweise sind videocodecs doch unabhÃ¤ngig vom betriebssystem, hauptsache ich habe einen player, der ihn abspielt.

Post by **bart** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 15:49

Originally posted by DAS BEN
mein arbeitscomputer lÃ¤uft auf win 2000 und resolume auf auf xp. aber normalerweise sind videocodecs doch unabhÃ¤ngig vom betriebssystem, hauptsache ich habe einen player, der ihn abspielt.

could you rephrase your reply in english bitte?
thanx!