Sorenson Talks New SV3, MPEG-4 Mac Video Compression If you want to put high quality video on the Web, you want to use Apple's QuickTime technology. QuickTime is widely regarded as offering high quality video and small file sizes with modest CPU overhead. To make the technology work, you'll find at the heart of QuickTime's high-powered compression feature the Sorenson Video codec from Sorenson Media. Since the release of Sorenson Video 2, Sorenson has been working at its newest video codec. Sorenson is near releasing Sorenson Video 3, which will be included with Apple's QuickTime 5. As the release of QuickTime 5 and Sorenson 3 nears, Insanely Great Mac talked with Sorenson's Joseph Romriell, the Director of Codec Engineering at Sorenson, to get the lowdown on what the latest video codecs have to offer. Sorenson Video 3 Sorenson is actually working on two new video codecs. First is a revision of its Sorenson Video software, and second is for the MPEG-4 format. Both are designed to work with Apple's QuickTime software, which enables users to decode and encode video within Apple's QuickTime Player or other QuickTime compatible applications. Internet video authors have plenty to look forward to in the new version of Sorenson Video. According to Romriell, users should expect improved video quality within Sorenson Video 3, which is achieved without beefier file sizes. "Sorenson Video 3 has higher quality than Sorenson Video 2 at the same Rate," said Romriell. "In our analysis, Sorenson Video 3 has the same quality as Sorenson Video 2 at 50%-66% of the rate given to Sorenson Video 2." Equally impressive, Mac users can also expect to see additional speed benefits when encoding their QuickTime movies. As with later version of Video 2, Sorenson Video 3 also support AltiVec and multiprocessor technology. Combined with the added speed increases with version 3, users of multiprocessor G4 systems should see a healthy speed boost in performance. Romriell continued, "Sorenson Video 3 is around twice as fast at compression as Sorenson Video 2 and three times as fast when using the popular feature of VBR (Variable Bitrate Coding)." Additionally, Sorenson Video 3 supports new features such as enhanced color watermarks and support for a binary alpha channel with chroma-key segmentation. The later feature gives users the ability to extract an image from a background and implement it into a new background for a "weatherman" effect. Also added to version 3 is support for better quality Internet streaming, which will help maintain video quality when users experience streaming packet loss. Standard vs Developer Editions Sorenson Video 3, will be available similar to users as Sorenson Video 2. The Sorenson Video will provide essential decoding support with Apple's free QuickTime 5 Basic. With QuickTime 5 Pro, users will be able to compress QuickTime video with limited compression options using the Sorenson Video 3 Standard Edition. Users looking for greater control and options can buy the full Sorenson Video 3 Developer Edition from Sorenson. Features found in the Developer Edition include altering the encoding bit rate to the users preference, adding color water marks, and streaming/playback tweaks. MPEG-4 While Sorenson Video 3 may be the big news to Mac users, Sorenson is also hard at work on a MPEG-4 codec for QuickTime. MPEG-4 is a newer video format designed to be used on the Internet. It's ideally designed to offer quality video with smaller file sizes, much like Sorenson Video. Unlike the name suggests, however, MPEG-4 is not a replacement for MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is the widely adopted standard for high-end video applications such as DVD, digital cable and other full-scale video products. MPEG-4 is instead a scaled down format intended for personal computers to share video over the Internet. Between the two technologies, Sorenson decidedly favors its own codec for Internet use. Why then would Mac users care about MPEG-4? Likely MPEG-4 will become a widely used industry standard, and adding the codec will make QuickTime fully compliant. Romriell describes the differences between the new codecs as merely an option for video authors. The choice between formats is essentially MPEG-4's transportability and Sorenson Video's quality and special features. "If the distribution of your video is managed well within the QuickTime architecture, then we would recommend using Sorenson Video 3 for better video quality and better features," said Romriell. "As time moves on and MPEG-4 becomes more pervasive, then our customers will use MPEG-4 more because it will start to have a broader adoption in the industry. The hope with MEPG-4 is that the day will come when you can compress once and know that all clients who wish to see that video will already be enabled no matter what the platform." Sorenson Video 3 Standard will be included with Apple's QuickTime 5 when it is released. Sorenson said that it plans to bring the full Developer version of its codec to Mac OS X, but OS X support will not be available for the initial release. Pricing and upgrade policies for Sorenson Video 3 Developer Edition will be available upon its release. For more information on Sorenson Media and its products, please visit the company's Web site.