Design of an efficient MPEG Vi

Design of an efficient MPEG Video ProcessorBy : Indra LaksonoVP R&DViXS Systems Inc.IntroducTIonAudio and Video codecs (coder/decoder) have always attracted research acTIvity fromacademia and the industry. These acTIviTIes are driven by simple economics: bettercompression means smaller storage and less bandwidth; technical breakthroughs inencoding techniques are enablers of new applications that in turn push new products intothe hands of consumers.For the foreseeable future, moving pictures or Video will always have a significant placein personal entertainment devices - at all layers through the product chain. Furthermore,the major electronics companies will continue to invest in these products and the R&Drequired to create new products will continue vigorously in the future.Today, we can view attempts to enable video devices with flash memory and HighDefinition, or more hours of content with standard DVD media, as further proof thatattempts to squeeze more video quality out of fewer bits is still proceeding aggressively.Even as the price of storage media decreases, it is clear that an average video enthusiast’shome archive is still much higher than commonly available portable flash media today.Going Digital: EncodingToday, video or television delivered to the home can be analog or digital. For the mostpart, home video content distribution has essentially gone completely digital with DVDVideoaccounting for the bulk of the media format. Regardless of the exact date ofanalog phase out for television, Digital Television is inevitable, and in all cases,companies who are able to provide more efficient encoding methods or solutions forcontent are going to have a measurable competitive advantage.MPEG-2 is the pervasive codec for video distribution from DVDs to Digital TV, thereare now two new major contenders H.264 (also known as MPEG4-AVC) and Microsoft’sWindows Media 9 (of which VC1 is the current name).There are various video encoding standards, of which MPEG-2 will be the main focus ofthis paper.The next major video distribution format is HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray, and the contentwill move towards HD resolutions of 1920x1080i.