Support and optimized for Apples multi-core architecture
MacOS 10.5.x Leopard supprt
Speed enhancements
Minor GUI changes
Support and optimized for Apples multi-core architecture Now, BitVice utilizes all cores on a multi-core machine, making encoding even faster but with same marvelous quality.
MacOS 10.5 Leopard support
BitVice 1.8 officially supports Leopard
Speed enhancements
BitVice 1.8 uses a technique known as load balancing on a multi-core computer. Test show’s that one may running as many as 10 BitVice Droplets in parallel without a significant time loss on a 8-core machine. (Depending on memory configurations, hard-disks etc.)
Minor GUI changes
In the preferences window, we added a checkbox “Quit droplet application after last encode” – meaning that the droplet will die after last batch file being successfully encoded.
Once you have created a droplet in the folder where you want the resulting MPEG-2 files, you can drag and drop up to 200 QuickTime movies onto it.
IRON MAIDEN CHOSE INNOBITS AND BITVICE FOR LIVE DVD
The British band Iron Maiden chose Swedish Innobits and their BitVice MPEG-2 encoder, for their live DVD "Death on the Road". With this operation Iron Maiden secured the highest possible image quality with available technology for their DVD. The result scored a complete success and the band expressed their desire to deepen its cooperation with Innobits for future video projects. The work is done and the band plans to release the DVD worldwide in Q1 of 2007.
Encoding of a movie, i.e., the reduction of its data size, is necessary for it to fit on a DVD disc. Iron Maiden did comparison tests with the industries leading encoders, including very expensive hardware encoders, but in the end chose BitVice as the tool for doing the encoding job. Innobits AB, contributed to the project with its BitVice product, technical advice and special software development.
Mr Steve Harris, band-leader, bassist and video editor of Iron Maiden says:
"We had tested almost every encoder on the market and found out that none came up to our standard for our live concert, when it comes to maintained image quality. Then we got Innobits encoder BitVice in our hands and were amazed at the result. All blue is blue, all red is red and the image is sharp as a razor and it dealt brilliantly with the smoke, speed and lighting of our show. When Innobits offered to help us with the encoding work, naturally we accepted at once".
"Normally, when shooting live concerts, the lighting is adapted to facilitate better control of the video. Mr Harris, though, is very uncompromising with the appearance of Iron Maiden shows and accepts no changes in the lighting, This, in combination with his action filled video editing style, resulted in a video which was extremely difficult to compress to DVD format, using MPEG-2 equipment and methods prevalent in the business. That is why the band found our competence and experience invaluable for this project", says Roger Andersson, President of Innobits AB.
Innobits have more than ten years of experience and a unique competence in the video encoding area. They have their names on several patents and also actively participated in standardization committees in this area. This competence, in combination with current innovations by Kent Olsson at Innobits, during the project, resulted in a DVD production, intended for all markets worldwide, with the highest possible image quality.
"We feel very honoured that Iron Maiden, with their high quality demands, chose us for encoding their new DVD", says Roger Andersson. "The cooperation with Iron Maiden fits well into developing our new service; to help actors in the movie and music industry to produce DVDs with highest possible image quality. This challenging project incited us to design even better versions of the software, like BitVice 1.7 and beyond, I am sure our customers will appreciate this."
For more contact info, including to the band, send an email to:
mailto:press@innobits.com
Or contact Roger Andersson, Phone: +4670 675 0119
About Innobits AB: Innobits AB develops, produces and markets products and services for the video and music industry, primarily tools for video encoding as well as sound and movie restoration. Innobits is also pursuing several development projects for the digital TV and video industry. The new and existing products are not only for professional users, but also for a strongly growing group of new users, who want to take advantage of the superior digital format.
April 7, 2006 BitVice 1.7 Released G4/G5 Full version only
We recommend users with a BitVice Full licence to purchase this upgrade. NOTE: PPC G4/G5 and Mac OS X.
Support and optimized for PPC G5 QuadCore as well as G4/G5 single/duals
User selectable advanced scaling algorithms even for interlaced video
MacOS 10.4 Tiger support
Faster installer
More and even better information in the log-view
Speed enhancements
Minor GUI changes
New Feature
Droplets (for batch processing)
Better De-Interlacer
Support and optimized for PPC G5 QuadCore as well as G4/G5 single/duals Now, BitVice utilizes all four cores on a quad machine, making encoding even faster but with same marvelous quality.
User selectable advanced scaling algorithms even for interlaced video Now it is safe to scale interlaced video with great results using BitVice. Scale from HiDef down to SD without any noticeable losses. You may chose from several multi-pass scaling algorithms as:
Bilinear
Hamming
Box
Gaussian
Blackman
To see is to believe. Download scaled interlaced HD images from our server (> 7 MB) : here. They are all scaled by our multi-pass superscaler. If you want to change scaling method, just start BitVice and select Preferences from the menu. In the dialog window are several options to choose from. If you are uncertain - use bilinear. Just remember to restart BitVice after any changes you have made.
MacOS 10.4 Tiger support
BitVice is now officially supporting MacOS 10.4
Faster installer
We have abandoned the Aladdin installer for pkg from Apple
Minor GUI changes
DV Luma Correction changed to Use gamma 2.2 which is more accurate nomenclature
Droplets (for batch processing)
A BitVice droplet is a small (less than 1 MB) copy of the BitVice application, but with all settings already entered. All the controls are dimmed down and cannot be changed. So, just make a new droplet if you want one with other (or even the same) settings.
Once you have created a droplet in the folder where you want the resulting MPEG-2 files, you can drag and drop up to 200 QuickTime movies onto it.
This will start a batch encoding, using the same settings for all of them. You can create as many droplets as you want and you can even run several of them concurrently. They can be started completely independent of each other.
Mar 16, 2005 BitVice 1.6 Released G4/G5 Full version only
We recommend users with a BitVice Full licence to download this release, at no charge. NOTE: PPC G4/G5. BitVice Lite does not change so it remains in version 1.5.2. Upgrade offers will be extended to all customers with a valid license for BitVice Lite.
DVD SP Chapter Marker support
New feature
The "Interlaced Input" option turned on by default
The "DV Luma Correction" option turned on by default
Since many BitVice users report that the only settings they need to change from the default are the "Interlaced Input" and "DV Luma Correction" options, we decided to let them both be turned on by default. We hope that this will simplify for a majority of users.
Interlaced Input
This option must be turned off when using the NTSC 2:3 pulldown feature. It is also recommended to turn it off for input originating from film or otherwise progressively scanned images.
DV Luma Correction
For historical reasons and for the lack of any much better and short enough name, we decided to keep the somewhat misleading name of this option. Therefore a technical explanation will follow.
It should never need to be turned off.
Most users who use DV codecs from Apple must leave it turned on, to maintain color and level transparency. However, a few of these users have come to like the darkening effect that such codecs produce when this option is unchecked. Therefore it is still left as a user option in the user interface.
For those who use DV codecs from other vendors this option has no relevance, so they might as well leave it turned on.
The actual MPEG-2 encoding process starts with an input of decompressed RGB pictures, which are expected to be gamma corrected for TV (2.2). When selected, this option forces BitVice to to explicitly tell the codec to leave the frames at gamma 2.2 after decompression.
Most QT codecs compatible with international TV standards will do this by default, which renders this option without effect. DV codecs made by Apple though usually don't, instead they change the gamma from 2.2 (which is standard for the DV format) to 1.8 (which is rather unique standard for Apple monitors).
We guess that the Apple engineers probably designed it this way because they thought that the decompressed pictures were going to a Mac monitor, not to an MPEG-2 encoder.
Chapter Markers
This new feature makes it easier to bring Chapter Markers across to DVD Studio Pro from Final Cut Pro and other video editing systems, especially from Media 100 systems.
BitVice reads the QT movie and searches for markers only in the first enabled text track associated with the video track. This happens during the first pass a.k.a. the "preflight". This feature is not supported in CBR mode, where only one last pass is executed.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If no text track is enabled, the no markers will be read.
This means that the user must ensure that at least the track, which markers you want to be read, is properly enabled. To inspect which tracks are enabled and not you can use the QuickTime Player. Select "Enable Tracks..." from the "Edit" menu and a small window comes up showing the status of the tracks.
We recommend all users to download this release. NOTE: PPC G4 and G3.
Speed
The encoding time is further shortened. Reason enough for you to update.
Bug fix
In CBR mode, a too high bitrate value could be written into one of the MPEG headers. This caused mixed results when multiplexing for S-VCDs.
When the One-field-only property of the QuickTime movie was set by user, or any other software, BitVice used to honor that setting. This meant that the incoming pictures could have a lower resolution than they should have. This has now been corrected so that BitVice always reads the highest possible quality/resolution from the QuickTime file, regardless of the settings in the QuickTime movie.
Sometimes QuickTime movies containing Time Code tracks and/or Text tracks could cause interference problems, unless the user disabled or deleted those tracks first. No need to do that anymore.
We recommend all users to download this release. NOTE: PPC G4 and G3.
Speed
Much better performance on Dual processors. The first pass is now multi-threaded, for better performance.
Gamma correction
The DV Luma Correction option is totally rewritten (but the name
of this check box remains the same). When checked it ensures that the
decompressed source images will have a correct gamma of 2.2, even for
Apple's own DV codec which is probably the only DV codec that assumes
a gamma of 1.8 when decoding into the RGB color space.
CBR (Not available in BitVice Lite)
Added option for single pass CBR (Constant Bitrate High Quality Mode). When selected
the encoder also bypass the scene change detection and keeps the GOP's at a fixed size.
Bug fix
Checking the Studio RGB option didn't stick in the settings.
Some minor imperfections fixed in the user interface.
For compatibility with 16 bit ascii systems, the software is again
delivered as an installer, using Aladdin Systems's InstallerMaker.
We recommend all users to download this release. NOTE: PPC G4 and G3.
Added Plug-In for High-End Studio RGB transform
Better performance in Mac OS 10.3 (Panther)
What is Studio RGB?
Does your black come out too bright, looking washed out? The following is an attempt to explain one of the possible reasons why this may happen and how to fix it. There are several other possibilities not discussed here, including the "setup" used in NTSC analog TV signals.
On our discussion forum you can search for words like "setup", "illegal", "washed out" an so on, to find more information.
Encoding movies, with a standards compliant MPEG2 encoder, from a codec that decompresses into the non-standard StudioRGB format, will produce dark grey instead of black. That is because the MPEG2 encoder is not aware of the shifted black and white levels of the Studio RGB format, which some codecs may use instead of standard RGB. To make BitVice aware of the fact that your codec produces Studio RGB, when asked to de-compress the pictures, you should check the Studio RGB option.
Background Regardless of which QuickTime (QT) codec you used to create your movie, BitVice will always read the input pictures in a fully de-compressed ARGB format (32 bits/pixel, reduced to 24 bits/pixel because the Alpha channel is just omitted). Therefore BitVice does not do anything different with pictures coming from different QT codecs like DV, MJPEG, Animation or "none".
The codecs use their own methods for de-compression. Some of them may be good, fast and expensive and others poor, slow and cheap. As the processing times vary from one codec to the other, the choice of a specific codec will affect the overall encoding time you see with BitVice. Once the Alpha channel has been removed, but before the actual compression starts, BitVice does a RGB to YCbCr transform. RGB is the generic color space in which both the camera and the CRT's RGB gun of a TV monitor live.
However, RGB is neither suitable for transmission nor for compression. Therefore all kinds of transmission and compression techniques, both digital and analog, use various derivatives of the YUV color space, where the luminance Y is separated from the color information. The Y value represents the grey-scale level from black to white. MPEG2's flavor of YUV is called YCbCr, in which Y=16 means black and Y=235 means white. Y values outside this range are illegal in PAL as well as in NTSC.
These colors are called super-black and super-white. A pixel with equal values, x, for all three RGB channels (x,x,x) has no color information, only different shades of grey. For 8-bits/channel systems x can take values in the range 0-255. Normally, the conversion from RGB to Y is done according to the CCIR601, later renamed to ITU-R601, and MPEG2 video specifications. The effect of this normal conversion is that: black ( 0, 0, 0) corresponds to Y=16 white (255,255,255) corresponds to Y=235 This is where Studio RGB enters the arena.
Conversion between RGB and YCbCr color spaces is a somewhat lossy process due to the sensitivity to rounding errors, especially when repeated several times back and forth. There are numerous ways to do this, but not so many really good ones. Even with the best of algorithms and implementations there is always the problem of mapping 255 RGB levels to only 224 Y levels and then back to 255 in RGB again. In the Studio RGB format, that last step is never done. It uses only 224 levels instead of 255.
Compare these numbers with those given above for true RGB: black ( 16, 16, 16) corresponds to Y=16 white (235,235,235) corresponds to Y=235 This means that, even though StudioRGB is a kind of RGB format, the black and white levels are inset from the normal full range. Note the similarities to the numbers for Y, the luminance.
The Studio RGB format makes repeated color conversions less lossy. The cost for this is that it is not standardized and that the device that should further process the Studio RGB data (BitVice in this case) must treat it in a different manner than standard RGB data. Otherwise the range of levels would be narrowed down even further. It also has to be informed, by the user, which of the two formats to expect. This is why you now have the option of checking the Studio RGB box when applicable.
November 9, 2003 Innobits newsletter #5
Contents of this issue:
-Apology - For serious bug
-Download problem fixed
-Latest Revisions
-Price Increase
-Information Wants To Be Free
-Feedback
Apology - For a serious bug;-(
------------------------------
First we want to apologize to all our customers with Unicode systems. In an attempt to simplify and speed up the installation process, and also minimize the size of the BitVice download to 656 kB we prematurely dropped the installer application. However, reports from Japan tell us that BitVice 1.3.4, shipped as a stuffit archive, will not launch properly. When launching BitVice G4 and BitVice Lite, the error "Missing Library - can not find compressor library" occured. When launching BitVice demo versions, the error "Compressor Library - Magic id in Library not found" occured. Please, download your BitVice 1.3.4 again. The software is now again wrapped in an installer application, by Aladdin Systems. This new package also contains an updated User's Guide, but the version number is still 1.3.4. Download problem fixed.
----------------------
We have seen than a number of people have tried to download a BitVice demo without success. The server didn't quite cope with the load, but this has been fixed now. Therefore we encourage everyone who failed to complete the download to please try again. Now you will have much a better chance of getting an evaluation copy of BitVice.
Latest Revisions
-----------------
BitVice G4, BitVice Lite and BitVice G3 have all been updated to revision 1.3.4. A 10% speed increase has been reported. To eliminate the most common support issue, the earlier "High Precision" option has been dropped from the GUI, it will now always be turned on. All registered BitVice users can download 1.3.4 at no cost. From today it also includes the updated User's Guide.
Price Increase
--------------
The new price for BitVice Lite is US$ 149, the same as for the academic full version. BitVice G3 is still available, for US$ 56, but this product will probably be dropped due to lack of demand.
Information Wants To Be Free
----------------------------
If You know somebody who would like a chance to read this news, then please feel free to forward the Innobits newsletter to him/her.
September 28, 2003 Innobits newsletter #4
Contents of this issue:
-Latest revisions
-BitVice_Helper
-Avia Pro DVD
-Quick tips for better encoding
-BitVice Video Scrubber
-Referral Bonus
-Price Increase
-Success Stories
-Innobits Advisory Board
-Help Wanted
-Information Wants To Be Free
-Feedback
Latest revisions
-----------------
BitVice G4, BitVice Lite and BitVice G3 have all been updated to revision 1.3.3. All registered BitVice users can download 1.3.3 at no cost.
BitVice Helper
--------------
The latest enhanced version of BitVice Helper is now available for download directly from our site. It not an innobits product, we just encouraged Ross Cathriner to make it available to our customers. It may be a very useful tool for those who may not need all the bells and whistles of DVD Studio Pro. Quotes from Ross Cathriner's site: http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/ "Custom made for BitVice users, but will work with any encoded m2v. Encode aif or wav to mp2, Mux and build dvd, xsvcd, & svcd files." "BitVice_Helper now at version 0.4.2, fixed code to allow over 2 gig files. Advanced Options include: audio bitrate & sample setting, stand alone audio encoder, stand alone multiplexer and debug switch to keep terminal open."
Avia Pro DVD
------------
BitVice was recently used to encode nearly 1000 MPEG-2 files with test patterns that will be used on the new Avia Pro DVD calibration disk from Ovation Software. You can search our discussion forums to see what Dr Guy Kuo says about why he choose BitVice for this DVD project.
Quick tips for better encoding
------------------------------
Bob Hudson has compiled a list of short and useful tips for better encoding using BitVice. It is based on user problems that has been discussed in our support forum. http://www.innobits.com/f Remember that our forum is searchable and that you can use it as your gold mine for technical and practical help.Type in a keyword and try it out at http://innobits.com/f A massive amount of useful information has accumulated there over time. Beware though that some of the discussions may be dated and relate to earlier revisions of BitVice.
BitVice Video Scrubber
-------------------
There are plans for launching a new product later this year, the BitVice Video Scrubber, which builds on the DVNC noise cancelling system included in BitVice G3 and G4. It will become a standalone application with a modern Graphic User Interface (GUI). The user will have a lot more freedom to experiment and tweak the settings for different parts of the video.
Referral Bonus
--------------
Spending lots of money on advertising campaigns without knowing the return on the investment isn't very attractive, considering our limited marketing budget. Instead it seems to me more reasonable to share the profit with you, our customers. If you have a valid user license for BitVice G4 or BitVice Lite, you get a referral bonus when you convince a friend to purchase BitVice. Get $5 bonus for every BitVice Lite and $25 bonus for every BitVice G4. You can mail sails to notify us when you want to claim your bonus. Please do this as close in time to the actual purchase as possible. Make sure that you tell us who you are (use your BitVice username and the e-mail address to your PayPal account, if it isn't already in the username) and who your buying friend is, so that we can match the two together. We will try this approach for some time, untill the end of October I suppose, and see how it works out.
Price Increase
--------------
As a European company, having to pay our bills with the ever diminishing value of the US dollar, Innobits is considering the option of converting from US$ to Euro as our primary currency. This will most probably also mean a price increase for our products. We will announce in this newsletter, well in advance, if and when this change will occur.
Success Stories
---------------
Recognizing that current BitVice owners/users would be the best ambassadors for Innobits AB that we could think of, we would like to invite you to write something about BitVice that we may publish on our web site. How you use it, what you think of it and what you would tell a friend who could also become a BitVice user. We are very proud of how BitVice has been received among our customers, but we
obviously would like more potential customers to know about "What BitVice users have to say about Innobits and its products".
Innobits Advisory Board
-----------------------
Would you be interested in a closer relationship with us folks at Innobits and help us while we grow into an even more interesting company?
The idea is to create a network of maybe 10 or 20 people who might want to join this advisory board, where we could share knowledge, contacts, advice, strategies and discuss creative ideas. If there is enough interest we would start a new section in our discussion forums, which would be open exclusively for the members of the this group.
Help Wanted
-----------
I know that some of you are skilled programmers. Our future products will be command line driven and therefore it will be very easy to separate the development of the GUIs from the "engines". We want to concentrate on the engine work if at all possible. If you feel up to some interesting GUI development for Mac or PC, let us know. Or maybe you want to adapt some of our software for use as plug-ins for FCP, Adobe AE or something else like web development.
Information Wants To Be Free
----------------------------
If You know somebody who would like a chance to read this news, then please feel free to forward the Innobits newsletter to him/her. To make it is easier to find, for those who want to change their subscribe/unsubscribe status, we have moved that service to a more prominent position at the top of http://www.innobits.com
Feedback
--------
Please mail sailes for feedback, comments or discussions about anything in this newslwtter.
July 1st, 2003 Innobits newsletter #3
Contents of this issue:
- BitVice 1.3.1 released
- BitVice Lite 1.3 released
- BitVice 1.3 and 1.2.52 no longer supported
BitVice 1.3.1 released
On June 12 Innobits released BitVice 1.3.1. It has several new features and takes care of many problems that some of you may have experienced with earlier versions. They all had known issues and bugs, which have all been corrected in the 1.3.1 version.
BitVice Lite released
At the same time a new low cost (US$ 56) product called BitVice Lite version 1.3 has been released. Some features like 2:3 pulldown, filters and batch processing are disabled in this product. However, the MPEG2 compressor engine is exactly the same as in BitVice 1.3.1.
BitVice 1.3 and 1.2.52 no longer supported
Earlier versions of BitVice will no longer be supported and we do not recommend that you use them anymore. All registered BitVice users can upgrade to BitVice 1.3.1 at no cost. If you have a MacIntosh with PPC G4 processor, you should definetely do that.
Best regards
Roger Andersson / President Innobits AB
Sometime ago you opted in to be notified about new releases and news
about Innobits and our products. If you don't want to continue receive
our newsletter, you may opt-out at http://www.innobits.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents of this issue:
- LAST CALL for the 50 % DISCOUNT
- BitVice 1.3 available
- LAST CALL for the 50 % DISCOUNT
Based on circumstances described below, Innobits decided to postpone
the deadline for qualification from June 1 to June 10.
Many last minute additions to BitVice 1.3 have caused a delay of
about two weeks compared to what was announced in the previos issue.
We think that it has been time very well spent, though, because it
means that you will get a much better product than would otherwise
have been possible. We would like to thank Bob Hudson and all our
beta testers for all their help during the last month. We also want
to direct a special thanks to Mr Guy Kuo, who's enthusiasm and help
with diagnostic tools over the last couple of weeks has encouraged us
to make some extraordinary efforts to assertain superior color
fidelity to the source movie (Improved rgb to ycbcr transform and
Sourcecode for example rgb to ycbcr plugin). The 3:2 pulldown feature
was also included on his humble request. Without his personal
encouragement, this would not have happened until BitVice Pro;-)
Customers who have bought BitVice on or before June 10 2003 will thus be
entitled to an upgrade discount for the BitVice Pro. Anyone who buys
any version of BitVice before this date may upgrade to Pro for only
50% of the price
difference between the two products. However, the release date and
price of BitVice Pro are yet to be determined. For more information
about BV Pro, read the previous issue of Innobits Newsletter at
http://www.innobits.com/whatsnew.php
- BitVice 1.3 available
This is a free upgrade for all registered BitVice users and is
available for download at http://www.innobits.com/ssl/download.php.
It includes:
- A new compressor engine
- Multi-Processor awareness
- Batch processing
- 3:2 Pull down for progressive source video
- Deinterlacer added
- A new 2-level blur filter added
- Added preferences for common settings
- Improved picture quality for interlaced video
- Noise Dithering
- Improved rgb to yuv transform - reduced banding artifacts
- Source code for example rgb to ycbcr plugin
Best regards
Roger Andersson / President
Innobits AB
Sometime ago you opted in to be notified about new releases and news
about Innobits and our products. If you don't want to continue receive
our newsletter, you may opt-out at http://www.innobits.com
Contents of this issue:
- Introduction
- BitVice 1.3 Beta available
- Free upgrade to the BitVice 1.3
- BitVice Pro teaser
- BitVice Pro discount
- New polls at our discussion forum
- Last but not least
- Introduction
Hello everybody. This is the first issue of the Innobits Newsletter.
Some of you may have been waiting a long time for news about BitVice.
Two of the reasons for waiting this long are that we have been very
busy with development work and that there was not very much to tell.
However, now we have some useful information for you.
- BitVice 1.3 Beta available
There is a beta version of BitVice 1.3 publicly available at
http://www.innobits.com/ssl/download.php.
It will expire when BitVice 1.3 will be released so you will have to
be quick if you want to test it. The "Beta Testers Corner" is open for
comments from you.
A few of the highlights of BitVice 1.3 are:
* An easy batch processing feature
* A de-interlacer
* A new "film blur" filter (found under "Spatio")
* A completely rewritten "High precision" option (use it for best
results)
* Multi-Processor awareness (will make good use of your dual G4)
Most of the work, though, has been devoted to better quality,
reliability and speed optimizations for dual G4 machines. Problematic
clips that earlier versions of BitVice couldn't handle nicely have been
uploaded to our FTP site and these clips have made it possible for us
to make these improvements. Thank you!
Support for the G3 processor has been dropped. Sorry about that, but
it would have been painfully slow anyway. We need to push forward and
the maintenance of the G3 code-base would be slowing down our
development of BitVice Pro considerably. Especially while more and
more code has been optimized for the "Velocity Engine" of the G4.
- Free upgrade to the BitVice 1.3 release
Yes, version 1.3 will be an upgrade free for download for all
registered BitVice users. The release date for version 1.3 has been
set to May 15, when the beta version is set to expire.
- Who should Upgrade?
Well I think that anyone with a G4 processor running on Mac OS X
should upgrade. Even if you are running Mac OS 9 you should consider
upgrading to 1.3, because future development will be focused on Mac OS
X. It is recommended that you keep your old version until you have
tested that the new version will work as expected in your environment.
- BitVice Pro teaser
BitVice Pro will be a native Mac OS X product, rewritten from ground up.
No more strait-jackets imposed by Carbon. This opens new avenues for
speed optimizations that would be impossible using Carbon. Therefore,
BV Pro will not be possible to run under Mac OS 9. The current GUI is
all Carbon-based, and CPU intensive, so it will have to pass away.
Therefore BV Pro will have a completely new GUI.
The user will be able to freely define different sets of all
encoding parameters for different parts of the movie. This means that
you e.g. can specify that a certain filter should be applied all the
way from one frame to another. In another part of your movie you may
want to use other bitrate settings or why not a de-interlacing
filter? The different parts, that you specify on a time line, may
overlap if you want.
Should you still find a bad spot in the movie, no problem, because
you will have the option of re-encoding only such problematic
segments, using different encoding and/or filter settings. This will
save you a lot of time that you might otherwise have spent
re-encoding the complete movie, just because one or two transitions
went bad.
- BitVice Pro discount
Customers who have bought BitVice on or before June 01 2003 will be
entitled to an upgrade discount for the BitVice Pro. Anyone who buys
BitVice before this date may upgrade to Pro for only 50% of the price
difference between the two products. However, the release date and
price of BitVice Pro are yet to be determined.
- New polls at our discussion forum
If you can find the time, we would like you to answer the following
two poll questions. Please answer at our discussion forum.
1. Which OS will you be running BitVice on?
* Mac OS 9
* Mac OS X
2. What kind of processor do you primarily want to run BitVice on?
* G3
* G4
* Dual G4
- Last but not least
Kent Olsson and I want to thank all our customers for making it
possible for us to continue the development of BitVice.
Best regards
Roger Andersson / President
Innobits AB
Features new to BitVice 1.25 include: overall enhancement of the quality whether you choose to use the various quality options or not; further improvements to DVNC; a new option for more precise allocation of bits within a frame; the ability to select the name and folder for the MPEG-2 file; the ability to extract and save the audio track as an AIFF file; the automatic creation of session files that can be used to skip the first of the two passes if you re-encode a previously encoded movie; a picture scaling feature using QuickTime; and, some improvement in speed (by the way, if you haven't tried BitVice since our first release, you will find it is now more than twice as fast).
Fixes since 1.2 SR1
The rate control is now finalized for 1.2.5
Great Overall Quality Enhancement - be inspired
Save As - dialog
Save Audio option
Faster DV-Luma filter
Picture scaling
DVNC / idct missmatch corrected - no more pumping
Speed
....and more. Check out our user forum for more details.....
A service release has been launched due to several problems in the BitVice 1.2 version. We recommend all our customers to upgrade to this release to gain full potential of the 1.2 version.
Fixes since 1.2
"Data rate too high" DVDSP Issue - again
Min/Max user controllable Bitrate options
Sharper and better overall picture quality
DVD SP "unexpectedly quit"
DVD SP "silently quit"
DVD SP "VOBU longer than x.x seconds"
"Psychedelic macrobloc show of horrors" in DVD SP preview
SMPTE Time code problem for drop frames
NTSC 29.97 Movies will not stumble or freeze anymore
NTSC 29.97 Movies audio sync problem
m2v files bigger than 2 gigabytes could force BitVice to crash
User selectable "scale" or "crop" for NTSC D1 Movies
NOTE:
We have addressed the "data rate too high' error message that was reported by some DVD Studio Pro users. We have also created sliders to adjust the upper and lower limits of the variable bitrate encoding, however for normal use these are not needed. We suggest that you use the upper limit slider only when you are preparing files for multi-angle tracks and that you set this slider to Apple's recommended maximum settings: 8Mbps for 5 angles or less, 7.5Mbps for 6-8 angles and 7Mbps for 9 angles.
Excellent results can be obtained for DV source video by simply using the default settings and doing nothing else other than selecting "Interlaced" and clicking "Encode." Video that has gone through Final Cut Pro or iMovie does not need either of the DV options to be checked (please note that MPEG2 files will have much more contrast and color saturation when previewed on a computer screen than when they are burned to disk and viewed on a properly-calibrated TV or video monitor).
This BitVice release has been tested on DV movies that included sources that were originally on 10-year-old analog Regular8 video, 13-year-old second-generation VHS, very fast-motion video, complex animations and other challenging sources and Spatio and DVNC were not needed and no artifacts were noticed when using the 4.5Mbps default encoding setting. Similar results were obtained at 4Mbps. At 4.5Mbps, using a.pack to compress 2-channel stereo audio at 128Kbps, you can get over 120 minutes of video on a DVD-R General disk. By way of contrast, if you use uncompressed PCM audio at 1,526Kbps you could get about 80 minutes on a DVD. We believe that with the quality of the BitVice encoder, it will seldom be necessary to use a bitrate above the default 4.5Mbps.
BitVice 1.2 is now shipping. It has lot of improvements and fixes, also we have included our well-known DVNC (Innobits Digital Video Noise Canceling) system. It uses a subset of the noise reduction that will be available in BitVice Pro.
Fixes since Vn 1.1.2
"Data rate too high" DVDSP Issue
Break up after fade from black
Optional closed and fixed GOPs
Luma ramping for DV Cam recorded streams
Improved scene change detection
Overall better bitrate allocation
Support for 720x486 D1 input
Speed
Enabled the DVNC (Innobits Digital Video Noise Canceling System)
Swedish Innobits has released two new MPEG-2 Encoders for MacOS
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Innobits AB has announced an extensive upgrade, as well as a $56
"Lite" version, of its popular BitVice MPEG-2 Encoder for Macintosh.
BitVice is a true variable bitrate (VBR) encoder that produces
MPEG-2 video (m2v) files compatible with DVD Studio Pro and other
DVD authoring programs.
BitVice 1.3.1, which requires MacOS 9 or MacOS X and a G4 CPU, adds
several new features including:
- Multiprocessor support for faster encoding times on dual CPU Macs
- Encoding engine enhancements including improved RGB to YUV transform
- Batch processing for encoding several files in one session
- User definable settings that can be saved
- Pulldown for making 29.97fps NTSC video from 24fps film source
- Improved vertical resolution of progressive frames in interlaced mode
- New noise dithering, soft filters and deinterlacing options
- A Fixed GOP option for creating multi-angle DVD's
The above features are in addition to the previous ones. They
include multi-processor awareness, an advanced Digital Video Noise
Canceling system and other options for additional enhancement of
troublesome source video. They also include color and luma
correction options for older DV codecs, automatic scene change
detection, selectable limits for the upper and lower bitrates,
adaptive GOP Structure, and special still picture encoding.
"BitVice is targeted at Macintosh video professionals," said
Innobits President Roger Andersson, "and that means not only giving
them great quality but also great support. BitVice Lite offers a
reduced feature set at a lower price"
"With the newest version of BitVice we really looked at the growth
of 24P production sparked by Panasonic's affordable AG-DVX100
progressive scan camcorder. BitVice can now encode true 24P video
with pulldown so that it plays on both standard interlaced DVD
systems at 29.97fps and on true progressive scan systems at 24fps
(23.976)." Andersson said.
"On progressive scan systems this gives wonderful images free of
interlacing artifacts and because only 24 frames are encoded for
each second of video, you can use a 20% lower bitrate than would be
needed to get the same quality with 29.97fps source video. Also,
encoding times are faster with 24fps video," he added. "BitVice also
has a '16:9' Aspect option so that video shot with anamorphic lenses
is displayed correctly on widescreen monitors and as letterboxed
video on traditional 4:3 aspect-ratio monitors."
"BitVice users have encoded everything from VHS source video to 35mm
film source material with great results. We are pleased to add the
features for 24P users as well as the other new options and features
that will benefit all producers, no matter what format they shoot
in," Andersson said.
BitVice Lite 1.3 is priced at $56 and BitVice 1.3.1 at $297. The
latter is a free upgrade for current registered BitVice users. Both
products, a trial version and more information are now available at
http://www.innobits.com/. Academic prices may be applicable, too.
Innobits AB was founded 2001 in Sweden, but the ideas took form
already in 1996 when the Innobits R&D team was engaged in MPEG
matters for a different company in the broadcast industry. Loaded
with a lot of experience from the digital Audio and Video field,
including several patents in this area, Innobits founders decided to
launch their old ideas and bring them to good use in a new company.
# # #
April 9, 2002 The one professional MPEG2 encoder at a consumer price.
Innobits releases the BitVice MPEG2 video encoder. The high-end software encoder that is friendly to your inevitable quality versus bit-budget trade-off. Stuff more MPEG2 video onto each DVD disk, at broadcast quality!
"We have been waiting for many years now, that somebody would provide the kind of MPEG2 software we would buy ourselves. That didn't happen so we felt that it was high time to make an effort and finally bring broadcast quality video to the masses." says Roger Andersson co-founder of Innobits.
BitVice is a Mac-first software product. Innobits decided this because Apple Computer Inc. already delivers DVD disk burners with many new Macintosh models. The aggressive price model makes BitVice affordable for literally any video interested user with a DVD disk burner. Support for other platforms will follow.
You are encouraged to use your own eyes to compare the results of the BitVice MPEG2 Encoder to any other encoder (for less than US$ 1500,) on any platform. For this purpose a demo version is available for download at http://www.innobits.com
The BitVice MPEG2 Encoder costs US$ 297 and is available from Innobits web-site. http://www.innobits.com
Innobits makes affordable software tools for digital audio and video processing, tools for the sophisticated professionals as well as for the growing consumer market.
