Video coding

Video codecs are essential for:

• Digital TV
• Internet video
• Mobile video
• ...and a host of other products and services.

A video codec consists of video encoder and decoder. A video encoder compresses video to save transmission bandwidth or storage space. A video decoder decompresses video and displays it.

Both the encoder and decoder have to use the same, pre-determined video codec format.

This causes significant performance problems.

The Problems

We believe that there are problems with video coding.

1. There are too many video codecs. Which codec format should you use?

• If you choose one format, your device can't receive videos coded in other formats.
• If you try and incorporate all the formats, you end up with an expensive and over-designed device. There's a further problem when a new codec appears and your device can't handle it.

For example, a Blu-Ray Disk player has to support three video codecs : H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2. That's two more than it needs.

2. You can't easily adapt a fixed video codec. Why is this a problem?

New platforms, new applications and new types of video content are stuck with video codecs that were designed years ago. The basic version of the H.264 coding standard is nearly 8 years old. This means:

• Poor compression efficiency.
• Video streams take up more bandwidth than they need to.
• Video files take up more storage space than they need to.

What does this mean for you and the media industry?

• High development costs.
• Inefficient products.
• Long time to market.
• Danger of your product becoming obsolete.

So what's the solution?