Sorenson's SV3 Heats up Codec Battle

In the latest move in the relentless race to deliver the streaming video codec with the best data efficiency and image quality, Sorenson Media (www.sorenson.com) this week released its newest video codec, Sorenson Video 3 (SV3). SV3 will power Apple’s QuickTime, keeping the format in hot contention with RealNetworks' RealPlayer and Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

Although Apple had originally planned to include Sorenson 3 as the default codec in QuickTime 5 released this past April, release schedules staggered and QuickTime 5 went gold with the same SV2 codec delivered in QuickTime 4. Although SV2 was on the leading edge when it was released over two years ago, RealNetworks and Microsoft have since updated their own codecs numerous times.

"Adoption of QuickTime 5 has been phenomenal, with downloads topping 15 million in just two months," said Frank Casanova, Apple's director of QuickTime Product Marketing. "QuickTime's open architecture allows customers to easily add great new codecs like Sorenson Video 3."

According to Sorenson Media, SV3 provides a greater than 100 percent increase in data efficiency over SV2, allowing for the same video quality to be rendered with less than one half the data size. The company further states that encoding time has been cut in half, yielding a 100 percent increase in performance. It also claims an encoding speed improvement of up to 200 percent when using variable bit rate (VBR) compression.

The SV3 Standard Edition is delivered free in current downloads of QuickTime 5 for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and Windows. The SV3 Professional Edition is only available to Mac OS 9 and Windows users, and sells for $499 list price. SV2 owners can upgrade for $349; however, an introductory $249 upgrade price is available until August 31, 2001. A Mac OS X version of the Professional Edition is in the works, but no time frame has been specified for delivery.

The SV3 Standard Edition allows customization of an encoding session by setting the data rate, frame rate and key frame interval. Advanced features are only applied with the default settings. Mac and Windows users can get SV3 as part of QuickTime 5.0.2, available at . Mac OS X users can obtain the Sorenson 3 Video Standard Edition through a component download in the QuickTime System Preference panel.

The Sorenson 3 Professional Edition can be purchased directly from Sorenson or through a reseller. This edition adds a number of features designed to facilitate more efficient encoding using advanced options. The new feature list includes support for alpha channel/chroma key, color watermarks, automatic key frames through scene change detection, bi-directional prediction, support for two-pass variable bit rate (VBR) compression, media key support through secure encryption, and compression time packetization for error resiliency to packet loss.

Interestingly, the SV3 FAQ discusses Sorenson’s unreleased MPEG-4 for QuickTime, stating, "The hope with MPEG-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."

This makes Sorenson Media the only "big three" codec developer suggesting that the benefits of interoperability will outweigh the upside of better efficiency and quality that will always be delivered by proprietary systems. The argument carries extra weight given that its proprietary codec, Sorenson Video, is one of the technology leaders.

Microsoft and RealNetworks constantly square off in the codec wars and with the release of SV3, Sorenson Video is once again a contender. With the three major codecs stabilized, it's a good time to start comparing RealVideo, Windows Media, and Sorenson Media’s latest codecs to see who has the best efficiency and quality. Look for our own comparisons in the next issue of Streaming Media Magazine.