Pixlet: perfect codec for hires VJ'ing?

[DrEskaton]

There's been a lot of good stuff from Apple recently, but apart from the new hardware goodies (G5) I was interested to hear about their new codec specifcally developed for dailies use in post production.

Good things for VJ's:

-they claim half HD res (960x540) with same bit rate as DV.
-zero visibile compression artifacts
-no intraframe compression = fast scrubbing instant access any frame.

not much info on it yet but a little blurb here:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/panther/

interested to hear what any mac VJ developers think of this....

[zap25]

It was mentioned by Jobs along with his announcement of the new PowerMacs and all the other new stuff.

"Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Or a series of frames that are over 6GB in size can be contained within a 250MB movie. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary playback hardware."

What I know is that it uses Wavelet compression. Something also used by Jpeg2000. Pixlet would be something like M-JPEG2000 compression. The 20-25:1 compression ratio sounds like a good compression/quality trade off.

CPU load is higher than M-JPEG, but probably lower than MPEG2 and far lower than MPEG4 because you compress frame by frame and don't do any funky B/P frames with motion vectors and all that jazz.

[skyvat]

Maybe I misunderstood, but in the keynote Jobs specified a 1GHz G4 or higher for playback of this codec.

Think I'll want a G5 if i was going to use any realtime effects on top of that.

[syzygy]

Originally posted by skyvat

Think I'll want a G5 if i was going to use any realtime effects on top of that.

I think that is Apple's plan ;)

Dan.

[spark]

it was a 1Ghz G4 for 1/2 HD, ie 970 by whatever it is. full HD playback is a real problem, you need to throw a lot of money at it. now it should be possible with a stock G5 - bad news for a lot of hardware resellers!

toby

[robotfunk]

still I don't think this will be a good codec for realtime use. For making content, hell yeah

[brain]

does anyone know if this codec is mainly targeted at playing professionally mastered content (downloads from high quality movie servers for which you pay - like the apple music file model) or is this also going to be equally supported by programs like final cut (when?), so that you can use the format and base your own workflow on it?

will this codec be available for pc users too?

the main drawback seems to be that you can only playback with a mac, and no stand-alone players. so for VJs this means still carrying expensive powerbooks around or expanding the files to a DVD compatible format. will there be a quality loss in that conversion? how long will you have to render that conversion?

[dusi]

i think it is to early to say that this codec is no good for vj use >> maybe it gives very good quality and low bitrate at 640x480?? like i said 2 weeks ago, when i posted the same treath about the codec that it has instant pause and reverse so that could mean it has many keyframes and is not some new mpg codec.

http://www.vjforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=3732