Codec Technology Drives HD Monitoring Prosperity

As one of the main application areas, the monitoring industry has been at the forefront of the development of codec technology. It can be predicted that with the continuous development of technology, more and more video compression standards can provide increasingly higher compression efficiency and more and more rich tools for specific applications. In addition, the trend toward networking means that many products increasingly need to support multiple standards. High-definition codec technology is the key to chip technology. At the same time, high-definition codecs are also driving the prosperity of the high-definition surveillance industry.

HD codec is the key to the chip

In 1999, Philips PNX1300 chip was promoted and applied in China; in 2003, TI launched the universal digital processor TMS320DM642, officially entered the field of Chinese video surveillance; in 2004, Hass as the world's first to launch H. 264soc monitoring dedicated chip; Almost at the same time, Taiwan Shengmai integrated ARMcore, compatible with FA526CPU and MPEG4/MJPEGcodec and a number of peripheral IP, for the digital monitoring tailored video encoding and decoding chip SoC.

After ten years of development, chip coding capabilities have greatly improved. Previously to achieve 1080i image quality requires 10 chip code, now 2, 3 can be. Looking at market demand, the pursuit of better image quality is a very reasonable and timeless requirement for users. With the advent of intelligent monitoring era, in order to meet the monitoring system's requirements for the analysis and processing of video images, such as license plate recognition, face recognition, etc., higher requirements are imposed on image quality, such as high-definition format. This poses greater challenges to the codec capabilities of the chip.

On the other hand, the continuous upgrading of compression algorithms changes the image quality. With the security market mainstream compression algorithm to H. 264, even more advanced algorithm development, continuous improvement of compression ratio, and algorithm optimization have become the pursuit of chip manufacturers. In terms of computational complexity, MPEG-4 is 4 times more complex than JPEG, H. 264 is 3 times more complex than MPEG4. In addition to the basic requirements of Decoder compatibility and Encoder compression quality, high-speed system architecture, memory bandwidth, high-efficiency DMA controller, and even multi-core parallel processing are all excellent performance of SoC. key.

Judging from the current mainstream chip manufacturers' products, most of them support HD format products. For example, ADI's ADV202 and 212 products can support high-definition formats; TI's DM355 can support 720p's MPEG4 real-time encoding at a code rate of 4Mbp. To 8Mbps.

Codec Technology Drives High-Definition Monitoring Industry Prosperity

Hikvision Yu Hai said that in video surveillance applications, one of the obvious trends in the development of future surveillance products is to support new video standards such as H. 264/AVC, AVS, etc. The ability to support multiple formats of codecs is also critical. In addition, the ability to format the video stream based on different coding standards, different frame rates, and different resolutions is another key capability. It also said that the future development of video coding technology is the coexistence of standardization and specialization. The connotation of standardization is not only to develop new video coding standards by following the core value of increasing the compression ratio, but also to be closely integrated with mainstream digital multimedia technologies in the trend of the Internet of Things industry to formulate a cross-industry and cross-application application. Scope, unified and open standard system. Specialization is based on the standardization. It is premised on the compatibility of the underlying attributes, and the development of a wide range of applications is tailored to meet the professional needs of each field.

In short, while striding forward, the video codec technology will continuously input “energy” to the high-definition, intelligent, and networked sources of video surveillance, and promote the prosperity and development of the surveillance industry.

About video codecs

A video codec refers to a program or device that can compress or decompress digital video. This type of compression is usually lossy data compression. Historically, video signals were stored on tape in analog form. With the advent of CompactDisc and its entry into the market, audio signals were stored digitally, video signals began to use digital formats, and some related technologies began to develop.