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Video Authoring/Editing

Until now, expensive multi-chip implementations were the only way to create high-quality video on PCs. The available solutions required expensive boards, special hardware for playback, and over 10 GB of disk storage for the compressed output files. The storage is more affordable today, but the hardware expense still keeps most businesses, professional consumers, and home users locked out of multimedia video authoring/editing. Few businesses can afford the time and cost associated with video studios even though their need for media-savvy presentations is growing. Most businesses, video enthusiasts, and power PC users are simply waiting....

DIGITAL Semiconductors 21230 -- a single video codec chip -- lets you exploit these media-hungry markets. Using the 21230 chip, OEMs can build affordable video authoring/editing products for consumers. With these products, users can capture and compress in real time, edit, and add special effects to video on a standard Windows desktop. Business users might create training videos, point-of-sale kiosks, or interactive presentations. A real estate office might, for example, create a virtual tour of homes, with point-and-click videos -- rooms with a real view! A game manufacturer might use real video instead of 3D graphics. Camcorder videographers might edit out the "dead" spots, create professional scene transitions, and add soundtracks to their movies. And home users might edit their holiday videos and send them to family and friends.

The 21230 lets you bring real multimedia to your end users. Its technology enables video authoring/editing on Windows desktop systems without expensive hardware add-ons. It automatically puts video into a PC readable format, and its superior compression rate allows software playback without hardware assistance. The chip performs both MPEG-1 IBBP and I frame video capture and compression at 30 fps, and it supports popular editing packages from video technology leaders such as Cinax and Ulead.

Still Image Capture

Still images are essential to on-line media, and the ability to share them is fast becoming part of the context of everyday communication. Already, doctors in remote areas have illustrated the need by sharing patient X-ray or Ultrasound images with specialists in major cities. The patient need not (and perhaps should not) travel, and the capture-to-share capability saves precious time. Businesses, too, want to add photographic images to their web pages to generate excitement and to strengthen sales or promotional messages. Telecommuters want to be able to share selected images from a presentation with the staff at the main office. And home PC enthusiasts want to create stills from their camcorder videos to "capture the moment," or produce digital photo albums that combine old photos and still images from live video, indexed by subject.

Capturing images from existing video generally has been costly or difficult because it required specialized hardware. DIGITAL Semiconductors 21230, a powerful multimedia video codec, lets OEMs build simple, inexpensive solutions to capture single frames from any video camera, VCR, or other device that outputs an NTSC or PAL signal. Consumers can connect a video camera or VCR to their PC, watch the monitor, and when they see a frame they want, click to capture the frame in computer memory. Once saved, the image may be manipulated in many ways. The 21230 solutions will allow animated GIFs, morphing, warping, photo touch-up/editing, and digital greeting cards like those available from Studio M.

Video Mail

More and more, todays workplace includes home-based telecommuters, virtual offices in hotels, satellite offices -- and all of these may be dispersed across time zones. Clearly, there is a growing need for solutions that can capture and send messages, electronically, to be retrieved at the receivers convenience. Lets say the VP of sales wants to give the sales force a "pep talk" as the quarter comes to a close. Trouble is, its an administrative nightmare to try to call everyone together. The salespeople are traveling, their schedules are in conflict with each other, and the company cant afford to spend more money bringing them back to the home office. Its not only inefficient, its futile.

But with OEM solutions based on the 21230 chip, the VP creates an audio/video clip, attaches it to a mail message, and sends it via the Internet. He or she might even use video editing software to include overlays or special effects. The salespeople dont need any special hardware to "play" this message. Using any software player (MS Active Movie, for example), they simply double-click to hear/see it when its most convenient for them. They can save the email, replay it later, extract it, and reuse it in their own presentations! And for those salespeople who dont have software players, the VP can include a software player embedded in the message without adding significantly to the message file size.

In personal use, video mail can add a new dimension to communications. A child, for example, away at school, can create a video "letter" and mail it home. The sender can select compression/decompression rates to balance image quality and file size. This solution allows home users to add a very personal dimension to electronic correspondence.

CD-ROM Authoring

CDs are the best media for long-term reliability and storage. And with CD-ROM authoring solutions based on the 21230 chip, OEMs can offer home video enthusiasts the ability not only to capture the times of their lives, but to edit, use special effects like fade, zoom, and rotate, and archive them to CD-ROM -- forever! No more tapes getting chewed up over time. No more hassles connecting the camcorder to the TV for viewing. No need for professional videographers to splice and create transitions, or for a replication house to transfer video memories to a CD-ROM. The 21230 MPEG IBBP engine is ideal for transferring favorite movies to CD-ROM because it works in real time. No time is wasted waiting for software transcode.

With a recordable CD-ROM (CD-R) drive installed on their PCs, end users can create their own stylish video productions. (These writers are now available for less than $500.) Then they can simply pop the movies into the PC for viewing. Plus, the same file these home users write to CD may also be stored on the hard disk for future use, broadcast live, or transmitted over a communications network.

In a business context, the CD-ROM medium makes presentations and training infinitely more portable and easy to reuse, at any time and location in the future. And imagine todays sales force, faced with a staggering array of products. They may not know all the details of each one, but by adding a CD player to the laptop they carry, they can refresh their knowledge on the road. Or, they might show their prospective customer a video of the designer talking about the products development.

Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is a cost-effective and convenient way for individuals and groups to "attend" meetings or collaborate on projects. It combines audio and video in real time, face-to-face communications that bring people in different locations together. In the past, the cost of videoconferencing prevented small/home offices and most consumers from using it to enhance communications. But today, in solutions that use DIGITAL Semiconductors 21230 codec, OEMs can deliver these capabilities at a mainstream PC market price. For the first time, real-time telephony, video, and multipoint data conferencing can be integrated together into products for everyone. Even home consumers will be thinking about adding a visual element to communication through video conferencing "conversations" with family and friends across the Internet.

DIGITAL Semiconductors 21230 implements the H.323 and H.320 standards for video conferencing, and is optimized for business-quality ISDN and LAN solutions. The 21230 also supports video conferencing over standard telephone lines (POTS). To provide flexibility in resolution and formats, the chip supports QCIF (176 X 144) and CIF (352 X 288) resolution compression from both PAL and NTSC formats. For home use, OEMs may create solutions that use standard phone lines for direct contact, or that go through an Internet service provider. In an office setting, the solutions are likely to use the higher bandwidth LAN networks or ISDN lines, which, due to higher bit and frame rates, provide larger resolution for crisp, business-quality video. Telecommuters, too, are sure to be looking for ISDN based video conferencing solutions to help them communicate via PC with their colleagues at the office.

The 21230 codec supports the Microsoft Video for Windows interface, which allows it to work with third-party video conferencing solutions like VDOnets VDOPhone, Microsofts NetMeeting, Smith Micros VideoLink, and White Pines CU-See-Me.

Business Presentations

In major corporations and in small offices alike, todays information workers are starved for interesting ways to present business information. They are well aware that the world has become media mad, and theyre anxious to get attention and to compete.

With DIGITAL Semiconductors 21230 codec, OEMs can create truly exciting and affordable business presentation packages. By making the addition of still images and video possible, the 21230 provides real multimedia in the context of business presentations. Freed from the constraints of a two-dimensional slide show, your customers will be able to create innovative approaches that generate interest and excitement -- and results! And the "show" will be far from standard-issue slides.

To exploit the evolving consumer multimedia market, you might include the image capture and video capabilities currently available from Astound and Microsoft in your product. Microsofts PowerPoint now takes MPEG-1 files, so you can click on "hot" spots to play MPEG videos. Astounds Multimedia Presentation Program also plays file-based video or animated movies, and it provides a seamless integration of many types of special effects. Sales trainers might use your product to include a videotaped sales speech, so students get a chance to see and hear how the marketing message is "pitched" in real time. Marketing professionals might create a point-of-sale kiosk show with interactive elements to emphasize important points. Salespeople might incorporate video clips from a satisfied customers testimonial to add power to a business presentation. Imagine the applications!

Internet Video Kits

The advent of the Internet has spawned a new breed of small business that focuses almost exclusively on web page design and web site development. These web development companies, who have brought leading-edge graphics and multimedia implementations to their customers, are always on the lookout for new products and tools that make better use of their money, time, and creative talent. So to compete in todays media-frenzied market, these designer/developers need tools that support the latest in multimedia, inexpensively, and that enable a short concept-to-delivery timeframe.

To keep up with the latest innovations, web development shops and consultants have had to add lots of graphics, audio, and video boards to their systems. What if they had a single board that gave them multiple capabilities? What if their systems came with such a board and all the right software already installed? With the 21230 codec, you can build products that enhance applications like video authoring/editing, still image capture, and streaming video on a single board, and your systems can arrive multimedia ready.

Security and Surveillance Systems

In addition to real-time capture, digitize, and display capabilities, security applications require the utmost in real-time compression to store and archive the large quantities of video data they produce. DIGITAL Semiconductors 21230 enables the development of innovative security applications.

Consider retail industries, banks, and others who use videocamera monitors. Real-time video compression allows centralization of a security monitoring station and permanent digital storage of all data. Maybe your customers would like to have the choice of using a low-bit-rate video conferencing algorithm that saves storage space, or of using MPEG for cleaner video quality. Maybe theyd like to use a network to transmit the video from their monitors to a central office. Perhaps they really need to act on their management problems by implementing a camera-based solution that allows them to watch employee activity and track levels of supplies in several locations. Later, they could provide performance feedback based on what their cameras "observed." OEMs might also create specialized systems for civil engineers use in studying traffic flow and patterns, and driver behavior at certain crossroads.

Streaming Video

Streaming video, by definition, is broadcasting video from one point to another. Its one of the hottest ways to enhance a web page, because it makes immediate display possible. Instead of the typical, time-consuming download procedure, moving the video file from the server to your hard drive and then playing it, you simply click and play, right over the network.

For OEMs, streaming video has lots of other applications. In education, for example, new applications have provided opportunities for students to "attend" classes on campus from many different remote locations. From her home in Seattle, a student can watch the professors lecture live via satellite, as it occurs at the University of Maine. Distance learning increases the reach of educational institutions. It leverages fixed assets such as classrooms and professors over a wider audience, and brings remote-located students a greater choice of education.

In business, as well, many new applications are on the horizon. Through them, you might help companies to enhance communication across cultures, adding the visual element not currently present in typical conference calls. And the "prosumer" market -- those individuals who create their own personal or family web pages, and who want to play with cutting edge tools -- will get into the act just as soon as a company makes it affordable. That company could easily be your company....