Component capture via firewire

[Elton]

Different beasts.

CineForm has actual RT fx/transitions in Premiere Pro, and I'm sure they're working on having the same speed in FCP when they make their debut on the Mac. They create HD files that are in the neighborhood of 12-17 MBs (I believe) for 1080 footage. Their codec is basically "visually lossless" but in fact there is some actual loss, however invisible to the eye.

Sheer, while fairly fast to render fx/transitions with a good RAID, isn't RT...but it is mathematically lossless and is great to maintain quality with. However, files are more like 40-45 MBs.

Both are great.

 

[MarkG]

Still requires a costly Avid setup if I'm not mistaken, right?

Depends. As far as I'm aware you can download the codec from Avid's site and use it with any Quicktime-aware application.

But to capture directly into the format I'm pretty sure you need an expensive Avid system.

 

[BitJazz]

Sheer, while fairly fast to render fx/transitions with a good RAID, isn't RT...but it is mathematically lossless and is great to maintain quality with.

SheerVideo is definitely real-time for HD, for which it usually only requires a cheap 2-disk SATA RAID 0. Try it in QuickTime Player Pro or After Effects Pro to see how fast it is. Premiere Pro uses QuickTime's single-frame interface, so it can't take advantage of Sheer's speed, but we're close to releasing SheerVideo AVI for Windows PC (currently in beta), and also plan to provide Premiere plug-ins. Final Cut Pro doesn't support third-party codecs for RT effects, FCP can only take advantage of Sheer's speed for capture, cuts-only editing, and playback.

Andreas Wittenstein
BitJazz Inc.
http://www.bitjazz.com/