e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

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Emerging video codec set to draw crowd at IBC

By Junko Yoshida
EE Times, September 13, 2002 (10:03 a.m. EST)
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20020912S0057

AMSTERDAM -- As the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) opens for business Friday (Sept. 13), a new video coding technology, formerly known as H.26L or MPEG-4 Part 10, will be a hot issue. New chips, evaluation boards and software tools targeting the emerging video codec have begun to trickle into private -- and even a few public -- demonstrations.

Chip companies and software technology vendors such as Amphion Semiconductor, Envivio, Equator Technologies, iVAST, Texas Instruments, UB Video and VideoLocus will unveil their strategies for the emerging video codec.

With the ability to reduce bandwidth by 50 percent or more, the yet-to-be-ratified standard is on the brink of turning today's video market upside down. The video-coding approach, now officially designated ITU-T H.264, or the "Proposed JVT/AVC,"promises to deliver Internet Protocol (IP)-based, broadcast-quality video at a data rate of less than 1Megabit per second.

The broadcasting industry's interest in the JVT/AVC codec is no longer just talk. For one, Europeans are already planning to "include MPEG-4 audio and JVT/AVC video as new options for IP-based video delivery, by revising the current Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) specifications," Ken McCann, chair of the AV coding group at DVB, told EE Times. McCann, a director of ZetaCast, an independent technology consulting company specializing in DTV, said DVB's decision to go with JVT/AVC is not a done deal, but it's "very near." Unless some work within JVT goes "horribly wrong," DVB's AV coding group, working in concert with JVT/AVC, is well on its way to putting together JVT/AVC implementation guidelines for DVB's broadcast applications, he said.

JVT/AVC's coding efficiency, however, comes with a price. The consensus within the industry is that the gate counts of a new chip will likely increase at least threefold, compared with current MPEG-2 silicon. ZetaCast's McCann said the complex algorithm used in JVT requires a JVT chip to carry out at least two or three times more instructions in decoding.

McCann doesn't believe the complexity of JVT/AVC silicon will be hurt its chances of success. Rather, a potential barrier lies in intellectual property rights issues for JVT/AVC. Although the intention is to offer H.264's baseline profile free of charge, McCann doesn't believe this can be achieved. "The licensing terms for JVT/AVC could be a lot more complex as fundamental techniques used in MPEG-2 are common to JVT," he added.