The amount of video being carried over IP networks has skyrocketed. Internet video streaming, video conferencing, mobile video and IPTV have all emerged simultaneously, often with different encoding requirements. The need for video transcoding platforms has emerged from the desire to converge these applications.

Transcoding HD video requires high performance processors, interconnected with high speed interfaces.

Lowest Power Consumption per Stream

The main limiting factor in designing DSP boards for HD video transcoding is power consumption. Octasic solutions provide the lowest power consumption in the industry at less than 2 watts per HD stream.

With power no longer limiting density, a very large number of DSPs can fit on a single blade.

Flexibility

Current solutions use a complicated mix of DSP processors, hardware accelerators, and general purpose CPU cores in order to achieve the performance required for high-end video systems.

Octasic solutions, powered by the most power efficient DSP core in the industry, Opus, are much simpler to program, using only one kind of processor. This reduces the number of software tools required to create and debug code, while simplifying the system design by eliminating the need for multiple steps in a video pipeline such as managing external hardware acceleration blocks.

Octasic solutions that process video completely in software allow for very flexible implementations. One of the most important things for video transcoding platforms is the adoption of new formats, and the continuous improvements made to codec efficiency. It is important to be able to make quick fixes to the codec in software.

While H.264 is the new dominant standard, backwards compatibility with video codecs include H.263, H.263+, MPEG-4. The solution must also be future-proof to support technologies such as H.264 SVC.

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Scalability

Transcoding platforms must be able to support a wide range of resolutions and codecs. The DSP must be able to offer efficient performance on a small number of HD streams or a large number of streams from SD down to QCIF. Octasic’s solutions provide this scalability by providing a multi-core optimized for video, with scheduling algorithms and the ability to process many different resolutions simultaneously.

Using Ethernet (SGMII) connections to a switch allows for low-cost interconnect between devices. If raw video needs to be carried between devices, Serial Rapid IO (SRIO) can be used instead.

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Go to OCT2224M, TXP1000 & Opus Studio, Octasic’s Media Processing Products.