Aspex Semiconductor, a UK-based fabless semiconductor company, has announced a partnership with MainConcept, provider of video codec and other multimedia technologies, headquartered in Aachen, Germany. The partnership is designed to provide vendors with a dramatically accelerated solution for HDV compression.
The increased complexity of HD video compression is creating massive performance challenges for the video industry. This is resulting from the transition to HDTV, HD-DVDs and digital cinema. The emergence of multiple encoding standards for HD content, such as MPEG-2, H264/AVC and Windows Media/VC1, has created a critical need for software-defined, multi-standard HD compression platforms. Historically, the development of encoding algorithms has been a process of continuous improvement, favoring the use of software-programmable solutions that can be upgraded after deployment to deliver increased picture quality or lower bit-rates.
Aspex’s Extreme Processor solutions are 100 percent software programmable, yet deliver the performance levels traditionally associated with dedicated hardware solutions. The MPEG-2 encoder incorporates high-level compression software from MainConcept, which runs on a Windows or Linux PC platform. It also features low-level encoding software from Aspex, which runs on four Aspex Linedancer Extreme Processors on a PCI/PCI-X plug-in card The Accelera platform can also be used to accelerate other functions in the workflow, such as color correction or complex video effects processing.
For more information, visit www.aspex-semi.com and www.mainconcept.com.