14 DAY TRIAL // Aspex Semiconductor, a UK-based fables semiconductor company developing leading-edge software programmable "Extreme Processors", has signed a distribution agreement with Polar Graphics, a company which will support sales of the Accelera high definition video encoder platform, informs Electronics Weekly.
The Accelera HD MPEG-2 Encoder is a PC-based plug-in board which is said to accelerate the performance of PC-based MPEG-2 HD video encoding. Based on Aspex's Linedancer extreme processors, the solution is resolution independent and software programmable. This ensures that there is straightforward software upgrade path for acceleration of advanced HD encoding standards such as H264/AVC, VC1 and JPEG 2000.
"I am very exited by this agreement as I have been very impressed with Aspex's ability to scale processing power, and the flexibility of their software programmable processors," declared Garry Davis, technical director at Polar Graphics.
The Accelera HD MPEG-2 Encoder is compatible with many third party applications, offering video editing and post-production facilities the chance to boost performance of their current encoding processes. Furthermore, the platform can be used to accelerate other functions in the workflow - such as video effects processing and color correction - creating a cost-effective, easy to implement platform.
The Accelera platform also benefits from Linedancer's scalability, enabling multiple boards to be added to a system in order to achieve faster than real-time encoding performance for demanding applications. Developed with MainConcept, the accelerated solution maintains the same API as MainConcept's leading MPEG-2 software encoder. This allows existing applications to free up valuable processor resource, and immediately benefit from a significant boost in encoding performance by providing a plug-and-play solution.
"By joining forces with MainConcept, the leader in MPEG-2 encoder software, we're offering customers a unique plug and play acceleration capability for the timeconsuming video compression process," said Jeremy Hendy, vice president of marketing for Aspex Semiconductor. "Even the latest Intel and AMD dual-processor systems can't keep up with HD and digital cinema compression. Each of our Accelera boards has more than 16,000 processors working in parallel, doing the heavy lifting required for video compression at two megapixels and beyond. The solution lets our post-production customers spend more time working on creative, value-added tasks, rather than watching the hourglass."