Digital video takes center stage

Electronic News, Feb 13, 1995 by Anthony Cataldo

SAN FRANCISCO--Digital video took center stage at the Intermedia '95 show, here, where new software-based MPEG decoding solutions from CompCore and Horizons Technology Inc. (HTI) were in the limelight and Intel offered glimpses of its next-generation Indeo decompression solution.

CompCore Multimedia, which has thus far offered hardware-based MPEG decompression, unveiled the Softpeg decoder for MPEG-1 it plans to license to graphics card manufacturers. Compcore CEO George T. Haber said the software decompression engine will target high-end Pentium-class PCs that already have the raw horsepower needed to drive video playback. Demonstrating the playback algorithm on a Pentium 90 using a Diamond Viper Pro video card, the video stream consumed about 40 percent of the CPU's processing power, he said.

Mr. Haber said there will be a bifurcation of MPEG playback solutions--some using hardware, others using software--based on the application and the computing power available. "For 486s you need hardware and for set-tops you need hardware," said Mr. Haber, adding that the company will likely introduce an MPEG-2 software decoder within a year. "But for high-end Pentium PCs you can do the decompression on the Pentium itself."

But even though CompCore has ventured on new decompression turf, it is not distancing itself from developing hardware cores for MPEG-based audio and higher-quality MPEG-2 video. Mr. Haber said Hitachi will license its impending MPEG-2 video decompression technology--also recently snapped up by NEC as an ASIC core for set-tops (CompCore licensees also include Zilog and Cirrus Logic). A Hitachi spokesman, however, said the firm is evaluating CompCore, but would not confirm or deny a final agreement.

Whether decompression is hardware or software enabled, the current issue is that MPEG is starting to outdistance competing decompression technologies such as Indeo, Cinepak and DigiCipher, according to Mr. Haber. "The world has decided it wants MPEG. Intel can spend another $100 million pushing their (Indeo) religion if it wants to. Indeo requires three-times more data for the same quality image."

But Intel said Indeo is not standing still. It is expected to come out with its 4.0 next generation around August, according to Garry Well, Intel's senior applications engineer. He said MPEG and Indeo decompression techniques are in different domains: MPEG geared more toward full-screen, playback only and Indeo catering to graphics and text integration with video. "We want to be in the interactive CD-ROM title business. It's very hard to get interactive with MPEG. In general you want other things happening on the screen at the same time."

Indeo now uses 25 percent of CPU MIPS to run at full screen, though the resolution is generally considered to be poorer than MPEG. That CPU overhead will increase "slightly more" for the new version of Indeo in order to attain sharper, smoother images, said Intel's Stan Mo, senior product manager for multimedia. "But the difference will be that, as a codec, we're controllable as an application. It's a dramatic departure from what people are used to thinking of video on the PC. It's going to be absolutely kick-butt. I can treat it as an equal with other data types on the PC."

A new challenger to PC video decompression scene also made an appearance at the Intermedia--TrueMotion S, a software video decoder based on an algorithm developed by The Duck Corp. of New York. While Duck retains exclusive rights to licensing the technology to the game market, San Diego, Calif.-based HTI bought the rights as sole licensee for the PC market. Last week, Alliance Semiconductor, Brooktree and Integrated Information Technology (IIT) said they would support TrueMotion S in their video acceleration solutions.

HTI cites several advantages of TrueMotion over other algorithms, including ease of implementation, higher picture quality and simplified licensing procedures; it also supports PC, RISC, PowerPC and Macintosh platforms and is recognized by leading operating systems.

"HTI plans to aggressively market, license and commercialize the algorithm for CD-ROM publishers and others in the desktop community," said Cynthia Mordaunt, HTI's VP of marketing. "As a digital applications and software developer and service provider, HTI offers support for a wide range of video compression algorithms. However, we believe that TrueMotion S is the best software-only solution because of its high quality and because it reaches today's installed base of low-end 486 machines which Indeo does not."

Said to provide 30 frames/sec performance at full-screen, TrueMotion S is also an intraframe compression format, enabling editing and reverse and fast-forward features. The recommended PC configuration is a 33MHz 486 with at least 4Mbytes of RAM and a VLB/PCI display adapter with 16-bit color.

San Jose, Calif.-based Alliance said its ProMotion-3210 MMUI accelerator will exploit TrueMotion S. "For PCs equipped with Promotion-based graphics systems, smoother, richer accelerated motion video display completes the multimedia experience. Alliance's support for the TrueMotion codec reaffirms our commitment to providing the greatest breadth and depth of multimedia drivers in the industry," said Sid Agrawal, Alliance's VP of marketing.