Zaxel Lossless Compression

What is Lossless Compression?
Lossless compression is a class of compression in which compression and decompression are completely reversible. If a file is losslessly compressed and then decompressed, the resulting file is bit-for-bit the same as the original file. This type of compression is necessary when detailed analysis of the data is required (scientific, industrial, semiconductor, medical), when the data will be lossy compressed at some point (broadcast, webcast), and any time flawless video is needed. Zaxel uses only lossless compression.

What is Lossy Compression?
Lossy compression refers to compression in which data is discarded to reduce file size and datarate. Lossy is not appropriate when ultimate quality must be kept from image acquisition to final product. Lossy is appropriate when high image quality is not necessary. Most compression schemes, even those that claim "lossless-quality," use lossy compression, permanently discarding some of the original video data to achieve high compression rates.

While lossy compression has its place, few companies have attempted to develop leading-edge lossless compression technologies, leaving many market segments without affordable ways to do their work.

What is Zaxel Lossless Compression?
Zaxel Lossless Compression (ZLC) is a combination of algorithms that compress video at a throughput of up to 73MB/sec using an 800Mhz Pentium III processor. This allows real time compression at up to 73MB/sec, which is more than enough for most video applications.

ZLC functions without the hardware overhead of other uncompressed capture systems. No expensive hardware compression boards are required. ZLC is software-only using a software RAID in an off-the-shelf PC; just add a second processor for HDTV resolution.

Unlike lossy and so-called "lossless-quality" video compression schemes, ZLC makes no permanent changes to the video it compresses. The video that is decompressed is guaranteed to be bit-for-bit identical to the video that was originally compressed. Imagine a medical misdiagnosis because of compression artifacts -- that's why Zaxel Lossless Compression is so important to so many fields!

How well does Zaxel Lossless Compression perform?
ZLC performance varies with scene content and computing power. Greater CPU power will result in a higher compression ratio. ZLC is a system that you can grow with. As your computing power increases, higher and higher compression ratios will be seen. Zaxel customers have reported compression rates as high as 4:1 and in tests, 8:1 has been achieved. A compression ratio of 3:1 is typical.

Who needs Zaxel Lossless Compression:
The people and segments that need ZLC find that they have a general set of requirements:

• They want to save money and time in their video workflow
• They want to capture the uncompressed-quality video in a cost-effective way
• They cannot compromise on quality, therefore they require lossless compression
• They want to capture multiple streams of video to a single PC
• They want the peace-of-mind that comes from using a system with "off-the-shelf" hardware

What are the industry-specific uses of Zaxel Lossless Compression:

• Semiconductor Inspection
• Medical Imaging
• Scientific Imaging
• Industrial Inspection
• 4K/2K Production and Archiving
• Media and Video Servers
• Computer Vision Systems