Video

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Video Processors: Why the Rush?

In the last year or so I have noticed an impressive surge in new processors targeting digital video applications. Hardly a month goes by without a vendor announcing that it has the ultimate video processor. Countless new companies have sprung up to address this hot market, and established processor vendors are scrambling to re-spin their offerings for digital video. Why is everyone suddenly so eager to market a digital video processor? One reason is that digital video products show great Read more...

TI Announces “DaVinci” Video Technology

This month Texas Instruments announced that it will offer a new line of products for implementing digital video applications. TI’s “DaVinci Digital Video Technology” encompasses new video-oriented chips, software, and tools, all of which are intended to be used together to help companies quickly develop new video products. Thus far, only the DaVinci brand has been introduced; TI expects to announce specific DaVinci products before the end of the year. The forthcoming DaVinci chips will Read more...

Telairity Chip Targets High-Definition Video Encoding

Today fabless chip startup Telairity introduced its first chip, the T1P2000. The chip targets high-definition H.264 video encoding in applications such as broadcast encoders, video servers, and video authoring systems. The T1P2000 is based on the Telairity TVP400 processor core. The computational demands of high-definition H.264 encoding are enormous, and the architecture of the T1P2000 reflects these tough demands. The T1P2000 includes five Telairity TVP400 processor cores as well as a Read more...

Case Study: Measuring Multimedia Performance

At first glance, measuring processor performance on multimedia applications can seem straightforward. Many multimedia applications are based on published standards and widely available software. For example, MPEG-4 video decompression software is available for most popular processors. Because such software is often readily available, measuring multimedia performance may seem to be a simple matter of checking the processor vendor's published performance data for the relevant software modules Read more...

Inside DSP on Digital Video: H.264: the Video codec to watch

Digital video found its first big consumer market in DVD players, and has moved on from there. Now you can buy digital set-top boxes, camcorders, personal video recorders (PVRs), portable media players, and even digital-video-enabled cell phones. Products that can only handle analog video will soon be extinct; they’ll be relegated to technology museums, sitting next to vinyl records and eight-track tape players. The mass migration from analog to digital video has been enabled by video Read more...

Inside DSP on Digital Video: Processors for video—Know your options

To create a successful digital video product, you need to choose the right processor. Sounds simple—but of course, it isn’t. A big part of the challenge is that there are so many types of processors from which to choose: general-purpose CPUs, FPGAs, DSPs, configurable processors, and fixed-function chips, among others. A further complication is that digital video is a fast-moving field, with standards that are shifting and evolving. As a result, a processor’s ability to adapt to changes Read more...

Inside DSP on Digital Video: Trends to watch—Digital video looks to the future

Digital video technology is reshaping our lives, changing everything from how we entertain ourselves to how we protect ourselves. As digital technologies become pervasive, they are making video products more affordable, convenient, and sophisticated. In this article, we explore major developments in three digital video application areas: home entertainment, mobile video, and surveillance. Home entertainment Digital video has already made significant inroads into home entertainment Read more...

Inside DSP on Digital Video: Developing Software for a Digital Video Product

Implementing real-time video processing functions in software is a challenging task. In this article we explore the particularly difficult challenges presented by video compression algorithms. Although we focus on video compression algorithms, the ideas and techniques in this article also apply to other types of video processing software. What’s Unique about Video Software? Software development for video applications presents many of the same challenges as those found in other embedded Read more...

Inside DSP on Digital Video: Growing a digital video ecosystem

A few years ago, it seemed obvious that we were on the verge of a major change in how consumers obtain and view movies at home. There would be no more schlepping out to the video store to rent a DVD; with the increasing availability of digital video content on the Internet, it seemed clear that everyone would shift to streaming video, to video-on-demand, to any-movie-anytime-with-no-late-fees. The video stores all would close down and become Starbucks cafes or yoga studios. This hasn’t Read more...

CEVA Announces Software-Based Multimedia Acceleration

This month DSP core licensor CEVA announced an unusual multimedia acceleration technology called MediaMagic. Instead of using specialized hardware accelerators, MediaMagic improves multimedia performance using a software technique CEVA calls a "pattern recognition engine." The pattern recognition engine maintains a table of previously-calculated results for algorithms such as the DCT. When multimedia application software invokes one of these algorithms, the pattern recognition engine Read more...