ZyGoVideo Pro Version 1.2 for Mac OS and Windows has been released. A preview version was made available during Macworld San Francisco last month, but now the finished version is here from Media Metastasis.
ZyGoVideo is a codec for QuickTime and QuickTime Pro that compresses and decompresses video files to deliver broadcast-quality video at lower transmission speeds. It can compress smooth running video at 28.8 kbps and 56 kbps in real-time.
“ZyGovideo rivals Windows Media and Real quality at streaming rates without dropping frames,” Rod Sheffield, president and CEO of Media Metastasis, said. “Version 1.2 is more stable during playback, especially for multiple videos played at once. ZyGoVideo Pro Version 1.2 is also designed for a smaller memory footprint. Changes made for Version 1.2 improve compression and playback speed, allowing less powerful machines to compress video content in real-time, and less powerful machines to play back larger bitrate videos.”
He added that Media Metastasis is offering these codec improvements as a “preview” to the content compressionists who are using the latest tools, like Hip Flics 1.1 and their codec under Mac OS X. HipFlics is a digital video enhancing, compressing and processing tool from Totally Hip. It can be used as a standalone product or in conjunction with other digital video or Web authoring products such as LiveStage Professional. HipFlics is a QuickTime based tool that makes use of the popular QuickTime movie format.
The basic decompression component of ZyGoVideo is automatically downloaded from the QuickTime Component Download site when playing clips compressed with ZyGoVideo and the next release of the QuickTime Player will include an integrated ZyGoVideo decoder. The ZygoVideo Pro compression CODEC for preparing videos for streaming or video-on-demand applications is available at the Vianet Web site.
ZyGoVideo provides a full set of professional compression settings to control datarate, quality and encode/decode speed for a nearly limitless number of video sources, Sheffield said.
“Our Mac OS X Preview of version 1.2 has been very successful,” Sheffield said. “We are happy to release the changes we have made to enhance playback performance and memory use in our PDA code base into all of our Pro products. Our goal remains to allow customers to compress their videos easily, and in real time under QuickTime, and to soon be able to play those videos back on PDAs. We will be discussing the creation of both videos and stills using ZyGoVideo Pro at QuickTime Live. We will concentrate on video that will be appropriate for modem speed web connections. We will also talk about how our unique wavelet key frame compression takes half the space of other codecs and allows for large scale storage of stills on existing 8M PDAs.”
QuickTime Live! 2002 is slated for Feb. 11-14, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, CA. The conference will feature keynotes, full-day workshops, breakout sessions and a product showcase featuring the latest development tools based on QuickTime technology.
QuickTime Live! attendees will learn how to implement and manage the entire streaming media creation and distribution process. The conference will include beginner and advanced tracks on authoring, editing and streaming content via QuickTime. Individual sessions will be targeted to both content providers and streaming media developers, and offer hands-on experience on digital media editing tools, QuickTime interactive movie creation, QuickTime VR and QuickTime for Java.
ZyGoVideo is contributing two OS X Pro codecs as prizes in Totally Hip’s Big Q-Huna contest at QuickTime Live. QuickTime Live attendees will be able to see examples of ZyGoVideo compressions within Hip Flics in the Totally Hip booth.
The ZyGoVideo Pro Version 1.2 compressors are available now from the product Web site for US$79. Existing customers can download the Version 1.2 upgrade for free. The ZyGoVideo Pro OS X and Hip Flics 1.1 bundle special is still available for $129.