#NAB News
The MPEG standards were based on designs for compressing LARGE images into
small spaces, MPEG is hacked to work better for moving series of pictures,
but still emphasize their low bit-rate data streams, which is why they can
play off slow CDs and are a choice for limited bandwidth transmission.
The Flyer is using the maximum transfer rates from the fastest available
drives to deliver lossless, high-bandwidth video data. According to
NewTek claims, their custom VTASC compression scheme introduces 'loss' in
the form of video noise which is equivalent to the 'generation loss' one
associates with repeated dubs. They also said that they could do 'better
than D2' lossless quality, but couldn't find an application for such.
Another interesting factor is the fact that The toaster and NewTek have
been working with D2 digital signals for years now, and the various
JPEG/MPEG products only seem to have heard that video comes in fields (60
per sec even) this year. Anyone who captures composite video to 24-bits
of RGB, then compresses that is creating alot (6-9 bits per pixel) of
bogus color info, then compressing it.. which is just silly. That is what
most of the existing NLE and capture systems do. Also, besides NewTek,
only Quantel was showing an NLE which was 'online'.. theirs was half a
million bucks (but it probably came with a technician!), and Matrox was
showing their MJPEG NLE, while explaining that it was IMPOSSIBLE to do
online NLE (hence their continued support of machine control).