Image processing accelerator gains latest codecs
A Renesas Technology Europe product story
Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Sep 6, 2005
New middleware for the VPU4 image processing hardware accelerator supports high-speed MPEG-4 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoding/decoding.
Renesas Technology Europe has developed middleware for its VPU4 4th generation video processing unit image processing hardware accelerator that supports high speed MPEG-4 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoding/decoding.
The middleware comprises a software library for products that incorporate a SH-Mobile application processor with a VPU4, such as the SH-Mobile3A.
By sharing the processing load between hardware and software to give an optimal balance of cost and performance, it enables improved development efficiency and high image quality recording and playback for multimedia applications such as videophone and terrestrial digital broadcasting for mobile phones.
Both the MPEG-4 Simple Profile and H.264 Baseline Profile moving image compression standards are supported by the middleware, therefore it facilitates the development of video applications compatible with one-segment broadcasting in Japan, South Korean T-DMB/S-DMB and European DVB-H.
It is optimised to make maximum use of the VPU4's processing capability enabling 720 x 480 pixel image encoding/ decoding at 30 frames per second for both MPEG-4 and H.264.
In addition, H.264 application development software solutions can be provided by combining this middleware with Renesas Technology audio middleware or similar.
The middleware provides real-time high image quality encoding by applying an original image quality control algorithm, developed by Renesas Technology, to the image quality control function in the VPU4.
This algorithm uses interframe information to determine the optimum parameters for frames to be encoded, enabling a 1dB PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio) improvement to be achieved.
This results in lower noise (such as block distortion) and stable image quality for scenes featuring fast motion.
MPEG-4 and H.264 operation of the VPU4 can be implemented with the same type of API (application programming interface) using the middleware.
It is only necessary to specify MPEG-4 or H.264 operation when writing the API in an application program, improving programming efficiency.
This enables programs to be shared by different applications, such as videophone and moving image playback/ recording using MPEG-4, and one-segment broadcasting and moving image recording/playback using H.264.
This reduces application development time by approximately two-thirds compared with a case where APIs are incorporated separately for MPEG-4 and H.264.
The middleware will be available from 6th September 2005.
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