Imagination adds to VXE video encoder range

Imagination Technologies has announced the availability of two IP cores in the PowerVR VXE video encoder range.

PowerVR VXE251 and VXE280 deliver multi-standard encoding at SD and HD resolutions respectively.

PowerVR VXE encodes still image and video sequences to a wide range of compression standards including H.264, Mpeg-4 and Jpeg.

These cores offload the entire video/still encode processing to hardware, which minimises the host CPU processing requirements.

PowerVR VXE cores typically take up comparable silicon area to single standard solutions.

This VXE range of encoders is suitable for a wide range of consumer and embedded applications including cameras, portable media players, video conferencing, surveillance, personal navigation devices and mobile phones.

One of the features of VXE280 is a scalable architecture that allows tuning the number of pipelines to the process specific clock-speed for maximum system efficiency and performance.

PowerVR VXE encoders offer quality encoding at low data rates and low power to enable efficient encoding for the next generation of consumer devices.

VXE280 delivers full HD encoding capability that is increasingly demanded in many consumer applications.

The provision of H.264 allows devices using PowerVR VXE to typically offer a significant improvement in recording times of HD video.

The cores encode video and stills from raw image data, producing a compliant bit stream at the elementary stream or NAL unit level, generate stream headers, and perform algorithmic functions such as entropy encoding, scan, transform, motion estimation and compensation, and deblocking.

The multi-standard support has been tested with a wide range of raw image data to ensure high compression ratios without reduced visual quality.

Supported standards include: H.264 [email protected]; Mpeg-4 [email protected]; H.263 [email protected]; M-Jpeg Baseline Profile 4:2:2 and 4:2:0; and Jpeg Baseline Profile 4:2:2 and 4:2:0.

Advanced design techniques enable the cores to encode full frame rate standard definition while keeping clock speeds low: encoding of H.264 [email protected], SD at 30fps requires just 75MHz, or 150MHz for H.264 [email protected], HD at 30fps.

PowerVR VXE video encoders contain a powerful real-time stream manager, based on Imagination's Meta MTX 32-bit embedded processor IP core, which performs all header encoding including rate control as well as overall core management functions.

The flexible rate control algorithms of the VXE cores include constant and variable bit rate control to match the requirements of the end application.

The architecture of the cores enables future rate control requirements to be met using existing hardware, without the need for new silicon.

Automatic hardware power management techniques including block and register level clock gating ensure that the minimum amount of logic is powered for each video standard.

This means that the cores have frugal power requirements enabling high performance, real-time video encode to be brought to power constrained devices such as portable media players and mobile phones.

PowerVR VXE cores meet the video requirements of a range of interoperability standards such as 3GPP and 3GPP2, and provide full encoding to JFIF1.1 for use in a wide range of mobile applications.

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