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MillimeterNAB Show 2009 Through My Ears, Eyes and Sore Feet, Part 2
May 26, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Other Codec-Related News
One of the coolest codec-related ideas that I encountered at NAB came from Broadcast International (BI), whose CodecSys encoder uses multiple H.264 codecs to compress video more efficiently than a single H.264 codec (at least that’s BI’s claim). Why multiple codecs?
According to the company, it has fine-tuned different H.264 codecs for different types of footage—high motion, low motion, pans to the left, tilts downward, and so on. During encoding, the company analyzes the footage, applies the codecs as necessary and then produces a single standard H.264 encoded file that should be compatible with any H.264 player.
Why hadn’t we heard about the product before? Because of the complexity of its approach, the company requires serious hardware to encode its files, like blade servers from HP or IBM. Not something even a reasonably serious streaming producer could afford.
Interestingly, however, the Fixstars of Japan ported Broadcast International’s codec to the Sony PlayStation 3 of all things, apparently because the PS3’s CPU is well suited for encoding the CodecSys codec. BI is offering two levels of software: a prosumer version for $100 per year, and a pro version for $1,000 per year. I’ve got the PS3 inhouse while we speak, and hope to run some comparisons in the next few weeks.
Matrox CompressHD
Matrox Accelerates H.264 Encoding on Mac and Windows
The first product that I saw at NAB was CompressHD, a $495 H.264 accelerator card from Matrox. It’s based upon an Amberella chip, and Matrox plans to sell both a standalone encoding card and the chip added to various iterations of its popular MXO products. In all forms, the H.264 accelerator integrates with Compressor on the Mac, and Adobe Media Encoder on Windows (but not on the Mac, at least for the first iteration). It accelerates only H.264 encoding for Apple devices, Blu-ray, or general streaming.
I saw a demo on the Mac, and I think it will have its greatest success there, at least in the short term. Wayne Andrews, the product manager, first encoded a 35-second test clip using Compressor’s own H.264 codec on an 3.2GHz eight-core Mac Pro, which took 56 seconds. Then he substituted in the Matrox hardware codec, and it took 8 seconds. It’s tough to do side-by-side comparisons in a demo room, but from what I saw, Matrox’s encoding quality was noticeably better than that of Apple which isn’t a surprise, because Apple’s codec has dropped to the bottom in terms of quality over the last couple of years.
One caveat: You won’t have complete flexibility in the first release in terms of target resolutions, as the card supports only standard resolutions such as 320x240, or 640x360. For example, if you want to produce at 440x330 or 480x270, you’re out of luck. In addition, early iterations will produce only .mov files, no .mp4 or .f4v, which shouldn’t be a problem for most applications. But check the final specs before buying.
This could be a totally killer product for the Mac—replacing Apple’s low-quality codec, speeding encoding by 7X, and eliminating the need to work through Apple’s confusing and often slow scaling and deinterlacing controls. For Adobe, it’s all about speed, because Adobe’s licensed MainConcept H.264 codec delivers very good quality, with straightforward and relatively speedy scaling and deinterlacing.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.