What is Alparysoft Lossless video codec ?

[Lord of the Discs]

Anybody dealt with Alparysoft Lossless video codec?

Would like to know if it is a fake and if not, what is it worth?

Just read about it at www.alparysoft.com and they say it´s better
then HUffYUV ? :confused:

LotD

[Zarxrax]

They compare it to Huffyuv (YUY2) so I would guess that their codec is getting better compression by encoding in YV12. Gotta love those BS graphs that show how much better their codec is. Its so persuasive :p

[Acaila]

And besides that it's a standalone application which requires an AVI input that is either MLOCO compressed (never heard of this) or RGB24. This kinda limits it's usefulness to say the least.

Although the denoise filter they've got seems nice...too bad that's also a directshow aplication.

[Koepi]

Another advantage of our codec in comparison to HaffYUV is the frame-by-frame compression, which facilitates editing.
(from http://www.alparysoft.com/prod/lossless-video-codec.phtml )
I wonder if they misspelled HuffYUV there by intention as that sentence is absolutely BS.

Hands away from those AlparySoft products - if you need to advertise with lies you have something bad in mind.

Regards
Koepi

[Lord of the Discs]

Thanks everybody, I´ll stay with HuffYUV.

LotD

[trbarry]

If you just want the savings from storing lossless YV12 then Marc FD made one. I forget the name of it but have used it successfully a couple times.

- Tom

[Lord of the Discs]

Thanks, Tom, I found it myself meanwile.
It´s called "VBLE" (I guess it´s a klingon word for "losless video
codec using YV12-colorspace" :D ) and I´ll take a good look on it.

LotD

[Svetlana]

Well, we are impressed by your interest, however none have referred for technical comments to our techsuppost service :-)techsupport@alparysoft.com.

First of all, alparysoft codec works really better than HuffYUV meaning that it compresses video with higher coefficient and has great potencial for speed increase.

High level of compression (Mr.Zarxrax) is achieved by means of using original algorithm, our codec compresses video in RGB24 avoiding losses in color space convertion, such as RGB24 to YV12.

Concerning formats - the version you downloaded from our site currently uses RGB24, but our custom development versions are designed to compress other formats as well.

Mr. Acaila, you can try our Deinterlace and Denoise filters also available as VirtualDub plug-ins:

http://www.alparysoft.com/prod/deinterlace-for-vd.phtml
http://www.alparysoft.com/prod/denoise-for-vd.phtml
http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/other.html

Thank you all for your comments, if more - please contact us.:) :)

[Koepi]

You didn't remove the comment concerning "frame-by-frame"-compression.

Could you please enlighten us, why HuffYUV (in your case misspelled as HaffYUV for that sentence) isn't editable?

The better compression argument is ok (if you really compress beter that is), but HuffYUV definatly does lossless compression frame-by-frame (we could say it's an "iframe only encoding" - I wonder once more why you don't use proper technical terms for that), I don't see why that's an advantage of your codec (in direct comparison to HuffYUV).

Don't advertise with false "facts".

Koepi

EDIT: i'll forward this as mail to them, let's see if they fially get it right and behave like a _good_ company.

[Lord of the Discs]

Well, if you can not use it in another application, then it is
NOT a codec, it is a stand-alone app (like Acaila said) and I
also did not like the way Alpary announced it on their site
(like Koepi and Zarxrax said).

But, on the other side, your (Alpary´s) deinterlace-filter makes
a very good first impression, I downloaded it and will play with
it these days.

So, that´s my view of the things (in literally translated german).


LotD

[TheXung]

What exactly are those graphs of? Filesize? It's certainly not PSNR. It is a poorly made graph.

[Zarxrax]

I just tried out the codec and I'm not really impressed. I took a RGB huffyuv clip as the source, and converted it. Both files ended up about the same size (1.99GB) though the alparysoft codec was actually a tad larger. Also its not avi, so its worthless for anything I would use it for.

[Svetlana]

The comments you made really helped us to improve tne content of our site, we took to consideration your remarks, sorry for the misleading information we provided concerning HuffYUV.

Concerning technical details, at our site you have downloaded demoversion of Alpasoft Lossles codec, which is presented as a stand alone application. However, it fully operates as plug-in or standard codec for our clients (in professional version).

Our graph displays ther compression ratio of the source and processed files. The characteristics of source files are added, and later on you will be able to download a part of one of them to check the performace of our codec.

Mr. Zarxrax, please, give technical characteristics of the movie you compressed with our codec or provide us with a link to it for us to be able to compare the results of the "experiment".

Thank you again for your reaction, all the questions and comments are wellcome.

:) :) :)

[Koepi]

I don't see a change on the website?

Koepi

[Kurosu]

Originally posted by Koepi
but HuffYUV definatly does lossless compression frame-by-frame


"Another advantage of our codec is the frame-by-frame compression, which facilitates editing."

As sad and deceiptful it can be, it is still valid. It doesn't say the advantage is over HuffYUV, but over other high compression schemes. Putting side by side the 2 sentences is sure misleading. Now, is it on purpose? I won't use the words "dupe" or "lie", as I don't want to bother, but I leave you the choice of words.

Originally posted by TheXung
What exactly are those graphs of? Filesize? It's certainly not PSNR. It is a poorly made graph.

Well, comparing lossless codecs' PSNR result is meaningless. If one doesn't have an infinite PSNR, then by definition, it isn't lossless anymore. Therefore, the size is a valid comparison criterion.

What I would prefer (although one could say I'm picky for nothing):
- could "Svetlana" introduce his/herself? It could be good to put in his/her signature what he/she does at Alparysoft, like RealMedia, Microsoft and 3ivx representatives did
- besides the axis have no units, the real problem with those charts is that they rely on maybe advantageous material, not available (this is being addressed, it seems) for evalutation.

The later point is a bigger concern for me.

[Zarxrax]

Svetlana: The clip I encoded was simply a mixture of anime and video game (super mario bros 3, NES) footage. It was 640x480 and contained uncompressed WAV audio. I'd love to make it available to you, but with it being 2gb COMPRESSED, thats not really a possibility for me ;p
Perhaps your codec would perform better on live-action sequences, but for this, it really didn't do well.

[xp]

Hi,

I was notified by Svetlana, Alparysoft PR manager, that there are some questions concerning our products. I’m in charge for the Alparysoft Lossless Codec (ASLC) development and some other Alparysoft projects. At our site http://www.alparysoft.com you can view our updates (not for the last time, I hope). Also we presented version of ASLC working with YUY2 format (http://www.alparysoft.com/prod/lossless-video-codec.phtml).

Updated comparison graphs at our site display compression coefficients of different movies processed by 2 codecs: ASLC and HuffYUV. We compared performance of both codes on 2 formats - RGB24 and YUY2. For the compression we took such movies as “Tomorrow never dies�, “Leon�, Britney Spears video clip “I Did It Again�, “Camerata� (video recoded on home camera), web-cam video.

In this forum it was said that our codec compresses some movies with lower coefficient then HuffYUV. It could mean that our codec worked on RGB24 (version available at that time at our site), but HuffYUV worked on YUY2 or YV12. Taking to consideration that YUY2 and YV12 are lossy in comparison to RGB24, we cannot compare the performance of codecs in this case. Compare codecs only if they work on the same formats.

We have not come across movies which our codec compresses worse than HuffYUV and we welcome all interested to participate in independent testing of Alparysoft Lossless Codec working with YUY2, which is now available for a download at our site (upon request we can provide ASLC working with YV12).

If you find movies, which our codec compresses worse than HuffYUV, please inform us providing the name and link to the movie. Thank you in advance.

[Koepi]

Man i'm glad i'm no product manager (nearly became one 4 years ago...)

Your definition of RGB24 being lossless and YUV2/YV12 _being lossless_ is quite misleading for our purposes here:

DVD Backup(MPEG2 sources in YV12). TV Captures(usually done in YUV2, nowerdays sometimes even YV12). DV Conversion(MPEG derivate inside, YV12, sometimes YUV2).

Accordingly, usually those sources are captured/encoded in YV12 internally.

So converting them to RGB24 is lossy already (well, in RGB24 it should still look the same if the conversion is done right without interpolation - but this usually gets used. After that [these kind of codecs get used for intermediate files] there's a back-conversion to YUV2/YV12 which then definatly introduces losses.). I'm sorry, but have to point this out to keep up our standards here.

Screen captures of desktop activities can be RGB24 though.

(Don't get me wrong, I don't want to badmouth your codec; but I want to stay on a certain level.)

Best regards & welcome to our community.

Koepi

[Blight]

I'm with Koepi... Other than CGI created locally, I don't see how you could even lay your hand on true RGB24 sources as EVERY SINGLE FORMAT is YUV based (for obvious reasons), either YUY2 or YV12.

Doing an RGB24 capture on a Capture Card is meaningless as the card itself captures in YUV and then translates the data in either the driver or hardware to RGB, so if anything, quality is lost when capturing to RGB.

Also ... I do think HuffYUV could use an upgrade. And I think some work has been done about it. There's a lossless MJPEG2000 codec from Morgan and there's also work from people on this forum, although I'm not sure it's really ongoing.

[xp]

Koepi и Blight,
I don't say that YUY2 or YV12 are worse or better than RGB24.
This depends on the tasks you solve.
I say that in RGB24 you have to code 24 bits per pixel, in YUY2 you have to code 16 bits per pixel, in YV12 you have to code 12 bits per pixel.
That's why comparing compression coefficients on different formats is meaningless, the "winner" is the one which has to code less.
If you test codecs, compare their work on the same formats.

[\AX]

I know nothing about the specs of video so im keeping my head out of that. But i noticed you didnt post results in your graph for like 90min? Im wondering if you could do a pretty typical movie we all have seen for a full run. The graph results for the trials you have done are so small. After all they are lying when they say its "its not the size that count but how you work it" :~)

as far as those small clips go its pretty strong coder.

btw im not sure on this. Why are you comparing it to divx when its supposed to be a lossless comparsion?? DivX is compressed no matter what. Probably missing something but i thought that was strange.

p.s. you should try to make ALL text on your webpage TEXT. I tried coping over some text from that graph and its 1 big image.

[Zarxrax]

xp: Will a VFW version of this codec be made available anytime soon? I am not familiar at all with this sort of directshow encoding process, but as far as I can tell, the only way to encode would be to use the little encoder program thats included. And if you have to use that, I fail to see the application of this codec, as you would need to export your video uncompressed first to feed into the encoder. And if you have enough space to make it uncompressed, then why would you need to compress it?
Either way, a VFW version would be very appreciated.
Also, could a speed comparison (both compression and decompression) between this codec and huffyuv be made? The speed of the codec is important to me, so I would like to see how they compare.

[xp]

1. Currently we don't plan to release VFW version of Alparysoft Lossless codec. We are preparing 0.3 beta version with YV12 support for the beginning of August. In September we are going to introduce 1.3 beta with higher compression coefficient. At the end of October -release version which will be MMX and SSE optimized.

2. At present moment Alparysoft Lossless codec is a little slower than HuffYUV at decoding and much slower at coding, because current beta version is not optimized in comparison to HuffYUV which has MMX support. In the nearest future we will update compression algorithm and will realize MMX и SSE support. After it Alparysoft Lossless codec speed will substantially increase.

[S_O]

A VfW-codec would be very useful, because I only use lossless coding for capturing (in VirtualDub). I only can use VfW-codecs for that. So I have to stick to Huffyuv, also because of it´s fast coding speed.
Will your codec optimazed to MMX and SSE only? That would mean I cannot use the optimazions, because my Athlon C 1333MHz does not support SSE (but it does MMX). Will there also be 3DNow! optimazions?

[xp]

The development of Alparysoft Lossless codec with VFW and
3DNow! support is under discussion now and the following improvements
of our codec will depend in many respects on the professionals' and
users' requirements. We would be thankful if you inform us about the
applications and tasks you use or wish to use lossless codecs for.

[Kurosu]

Originally posted by S_O
That would mean I cannot use the optimazions, because my Athlon C 1333MHz does not support SSE (but it does MMX). Will there also be 3DNow! optimazions? Most likely you are already able to use such optimizations. AFAIK, all Athlons supports the integer part of SSE (same register as MMX, new instructions) named iSSE - so does my Duron 700. And with a bit of work, most transforms are able to use integers for calculations. 3DNow! is mostly float calculus and the extra integer functions are more or less integrated to iSSE, therefore it is useless for you.

For the C part of your Athlon, I really don't know what it really supports (I hope as much as my rusty Duron 700 :) ) besides iSSE and 3DNow! 2 (which probably has a great deal of float functions)...

[unmei]

i guess a lossless codec would use integer only anyway. Floats are not suitable for lossless transforms (AFAIK), so the "i" part of SSE would be enough and is included in all AMDs K7

[xp]

At present ALVC uses only integral arithmetics. Now we are working under the improvement of the prediction module and it's quite possible that this model will work with real numbers. In this case using 3DNow! will allow to increase codec speed.

[Tommy Carrot]

I don't really understand why are they compare their codec with Huffyuv? It's really an outdated codec, VBLE and LOCO are much better, even if they are less known.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
I don't really understand why are they compare their codec with Huffyuv? It's really an outdated codec, VBLE and LOCO are much better, even if they are less known.

But that is the point exactly. Huffyuv "is" better known. So when they say huffyuv they will have a better chance of their target audience being able to identify.

Originally posted by xp
The development of Alparysoft Lossless codec with VFW and
3DNow! support is under discussion now and the following improvements
of our codec will depend in many respects on the professionals' and
users' requirements. We would be thankful if you inform us about the
applications and tasks you use or wish to use lossless codecs for.

Hmmm. Well the pros might want something different from what the so called users might want. But in large part the potential users are going to want no make that need a VFW encoder at least. You may compare your product with huffyuv for the sake of name recognition. But it might also be important to take into consideration just exactly who most huffyuv users are. There are some pros to be sure, but in my estimation the larger part is those in the home capture/edit scene. There are directshow etc based editors. But I can't think of a single good one that is free. VFW OTOH offers definate posibilities like Virtualdub. Which is where alot of people happen to use Huffyuv. So in order to replace/better huffyuv your codec should offer the same posibilities. Not to mention maybe G-streamer? :P

Better produts go into obscurity and failure everyday. They die due to a lack of accessability and functionality.