Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was

license A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

d and ultimately acquired from

Utah State University Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public university, public land grant colleges, land-grant research university with its main campus in Logan, Utah, United States. Founded in 1888 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as Utah's federal ...

. The company first announced its

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

(compression and decompression tool) at a developer’s preview at MacWorld Expo in January 1997. One of the company's best known products is the Sorenson Video codec licensed to Apple Inc. for their QuickTime 3.0 software. Since its release, Sorenson Media’s video encoding technology was used in Apple's trailer web site and video clips for film studios such as

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

, Lucasfilm,

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...

, and

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. **Paramount Picture ...

, as well as Apple's

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

music videos, before the switch to the industry standard H.264 format. The company was led by its chairman and founder James Lee Sorenson (son of James LeVoy Sorenson); its final president and CEO was Patrick Nola. The company filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

in October 2018, and was acquired at auction by

Nielsen Holdings Nielsen Holdings plc (or Nielsen) is an American media audience measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 15,000 people worldwide. For most of its history, the company was known for its two subsidiarie ...

in February 2019 for $11.25 million for their

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group.

Technical service for the deaf and Sorenson Communications

In 2003 Sorenson released its VP-100 model stand-alone

videotelephony Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

product for users with

hearing loss Hearing loss is a partial or total inability to hear. Hearing loss may be present at birth or acquired at any time afterwards. Hearing loss may occur in one or both ears. In children, hearing problems can affect the ability to acquire spo ...

. It was designed to output its video to a deaf user's standard television set in order to lower the cost of acquisition. It also provided a

remote control A remote control, also known colloquially as a remote or clicker, is an consumer electronics, electronic device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly. In consumer electronics, a remote control can be used to operat ...

, and a video compression codec designed for improved video quality and ease of use with a Video Relay Service (VRS). The product received favorable reviews and is used at educational facilities for the deaf, and elsewhere in the deaf community.Fitzgerald, Thomas J
For the Deaf, Communication Without the Wait
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', December 18, 2003. Following the introduction of similar videophones by other electronics manufacturers, the availability of high speed Internet, and sponsored video relay services authorized by the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

in 2002, VRS for the deaf underwent rapid growth in the United States. In May 2005 Sorenson Media split off a new company, Sorenson Communications, which focuses on products for the deaf or hard-of-hearing communities while Sorenson Media would focus on video compression software. In April 2022 the private investment firm Ariel Alternatives acquired a 52.5% ownership stake in Sorenson Communications which valued Sorenson at $1.3 billion.

Encoding technologies

Sorenson codec may refer to any of three proprietary video codecs:

Sorenson Video

Two versions of Sorenson Video were released, both using ''SVQ1'' as their FourCC. Version one first appeared with the release of QuickTime 3 on March 30, 1998. The backward-compatible version two was released with QuickTime 4 on March 11, 1999, which mainly included minor improvements and optimizations to the Developer Edition of the encoder, so encoded movies would be backwards compatible with the QuickTime 3 release. Changes for version two were only made to the encoder, not to the compression format. This format uses a

YCbCr YCbCr, Y′CbCr, also written as YCBCR or Y′CBCR, is a family of color spaces used as a part of the color image pipeline in digital video and digital photography, photography systems. Like YPbPr, YPBPR, it is based on RGB primaries; the two ...

4:1:0

chroma subsampling Chroma subsampling is the practice of encoding images by implementing less resolution for Chrominance, chroma information than for luma (video), luma information, taking advantage of the human visual system's lower acuity for color differences t ...

, which means every block of eight pixels share the same color components, which can cause color bleeding across pixels. This was solved in version 3 and the Spark version which both use the more common YCbCr 4:2:0 subsampling.

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...

supports decoding of Sorenson Video since 2002, encoding of SVQ1 was added in 2004 for 0.4.9-pre1. Version two was given wide exposure from the release of the teaser trailer for '' Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace'' on March 11, 1999. The official specifications of the codec are not public. For a long time the only way to play back Sorenson Video was to use Apple's QuickTime or

MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable Desktop, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A ...

, which used DLL files extracted from QuickTime for Windows.

Sorenson Video 3

This incompatible version of Sorenson Video uses ''SVQ3'' as its FourCC. This version was released with QuickTime 5.0.2 on July 1, 2001. It was available exclusively for QuickTime. Apple QuickTime later focused on other compression formats and moved Sorenson Video 3 to a separate group called "legacy encoders". According to an anonymous developer of

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...

of the SVQ3 codec (Sorenson Video 3) revealed it as a tweaked version of H.264. The same developer added support for this codec to FFmpeg. FFmpeg supports decoding of "Sorenson Vector Quantizer 3" ( fourcc SVQ3) and Sorenson Vector Quantizer 1 (fourcc SVQ1) starting with version 0.4.7, released in 2003.FFmpe
Changelog
Retrieved on 2009-08-10. Sorenson Video 3 comes with Sorenson Squeeze.

Sorenson Spark

Sorenson Spark is an implementation of H.263 for use in Flash Video and Adobe Flash files.

uses ''FLV1'' FourCC and Adobe frame identifiers of 0x21, 0x22 and 0x23. As Apple began to use

MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related ...

and move away from other proprietary codecs, Sorenson Media licensed Sorenson Spark (Sorenson H.263) to

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...

, which was included with Macromedia Flash MX v6 on March 4, 2002. Sorenson Spark is the required video compression format for Flash Player 6 and 7. Macromedia later tried to find a better video codec. Starting with Flash Player 8 (released in September 2005), the preferred video codec became VP6.Kaourantin.net (2005-08-13
The quest for a new video codec in Flash 8
. Retrieved on 2009-08-10. Sorenson Spark can be still used in the Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (2008) for Flash Video files (alongside H.264 and VP6).Adob
Flash CS4 Professional Documentation - Digital video and Flash
Retrieved on 2009-08-09. According to Adobe engineer Tinic Uro, Sorenson Spark is an incomplete implementation of H.263. It differs mostly in header structure and ranges of the coefficients. FFmpeg in 2003 added encoding and decoding support for Sorenson H.263.

References

External links

* format description by the Library of Congress {{Compression formats Software companies based in California Companies based in Carlsbad, California Video codecs Videotelephony Defunct software companies of the United States