Along with the many digital video processing chips available to designers, intellectual-
property (IP) options are available for those who need to design their own
chips to meet highly customized requirements. These options include RTL cores for
system-on-a-chip (SoC) design as well as soft IP for FPGA-based development. IP providers
typically offer substantial software support, too.
Hardware video-codec IP is available from companies such as On2 Technologies. The company’s
Hantro 8190 design can handle the H.264 high-profile, 1080p format along with Adobe
Flash, MPEG-2, and a variety of other video formats. Available in RTL, the
design targets integration with ARM, MIPS, and other CPU cores.
Soft IP for video processing, including codecs, scaling, and
image enhancement, is available through FPGA vendors like Altera.
The FPGA design approach is particularly useful for applications
that require both top performance and design flexibility, e.g., studio
transcoding equipment and video servers.
“Studio equipment design is embracing programmable logic
because of the proliferation of codecs,” says Brian Jentz, Altera’s
marketing manager for broadcast. “Digital video cameras work in
a variety of formats, including AVC-I, MPEG-2, JPEG 2000, and
so on, and archived sources may use additional format types. The
equipment has to be able to work with what is out there.” Jentz
notes that studios also needed to work with higher precision than
consumer devices.
On another front, there’s blended programmable and hardware IP
for specific video-processing needs, such as the Video Enhancement Engine (VEE) technology
from QuickLogic. VEE improves image viewability in handheld designs by re-mapping the data
to match lighting conditions, reducing the amount of backlighting needed. The IP is configurable
to meet specific customer design requirements, but delivered already programmed into
the device.
When evaluating digital video processing IP, developers should be clear on what they want
from the codec beyond basic decompression. Video-conferencing applications, for instance,
need low latency to be effective. Consumer devices, on the other hand, have a greater need for
high image quality.
Developers needn’t be video experts, as the IP vendor provides integration and application
software development support. But they do have to understand how key system components
affect video quality, power consumption, and other critical parameters of their application.
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