Video transcoder shifts into HD
01 January 2008
Just as there are different ways to capture video content, there are different ways to display the content, with a variety of resolutions and displays.
Texas Instruments has introduced the Da Vinci DM6467, real-time high defintition video transcoder which provides two-way of transcoding of formats to go between all types of displays. The processor is heralded as the means to drive the video market evolution. It can be used for video transcoding in media gateways, multi-point control units, digital media adaptors, video security and IP set-top boxes. Essentially a DSP-based SoC, it has an ARM926EJ-S core and 600MHz C64x DSP core for customer or proprietary algorithm and signal processing duties. The HD video imaging co-processor is actually two chips, the equivalent of over 3GHz video processing power, accounting for the 10-fold increase in performance of which TI boasts is deliverable at 10 per cent the cost of previous generations. The level of integration brings the cost, for example of a multi-conferencing unit (MCU) down to $35.95 per channel, by integrating the three 1GHz TI DSPs per HD video channel currently required to process HD video.
There is also a video data engine used for example in chroma sampling and scaling. Targeted video port interfaces include the conventional BT656 dual channel, capture and display and Gbit Ethernet as well as new serial and parallel transport streams.
The evolution referred to will see video content used in medical and security applications as well as consumer, communications and computing. Applications will be expected to manage local transcoding between compression formats to adapt HDvideo, which has large amounts of data, to enable it to be stored on different media and to be shared with other playback devices, using different formats, all while mainting picture quality, demanding a new level of performance and memory and codec algorithms manipulation. The DM6467 can simultaneously and in mlti-format, encode, decode and transcode up to H.264 HP@LP (1080p 30fpsec, 1080i 60fpsec, 720p 60fpsec).
For developers, another benefit is that next-generation compression standards can be incorporated quickly. RipCode is one customer that has disgarded legacy solutions such as software running on servers to transcode in multiple formats, for the Da Vinci technology.
As well as the Da Vinci development environment which includes hardware ,software and develoment tools, there is also a DM6467 digital video evaluation module. This includes MontaVista Linux, together with industry standard and Da Vinci APIs (application programming interfaces), Da Vinci Codec Engine and multimedia codecs for evaluation.
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