Mitsubishi demonstrates H.264 encoding

Yoshiko Hara
(02/17/2005 3:55 PM EST)

  OFUNA, Japan — Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has demonstrated real-time H.264 encoding with a general purpose DSP during an open house earlier this week at its Information Technology R&D Center in Ofuna, Kanagawa Prefecture.

In Japan, major TV broadcasters are preparing to begin one-segment broadcasting service over the next year, which uses just one of the 13 segments of the regular TV channel bandwidth for mobile devices. The broadcasting will employ MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression to air 15 QVGA (320x240 pixels) frames per second.

Mitsubishi developed an encoding algorithm that enables one DSP to compress video signals in H.264 in real time.

Mitsubishi demonstrated the encoding with a compact, DSP based encoder prototype. The compact encoder will expand applications of H.264 from TV stations to various video applications such as surveillance networks, said a company spokesman.

Compared to conventional MPEG-2 or MPEG-4, H.264 features a higher compression ratio and higher picture quality, but requires more computing power and memory. The load is not double but over 1.5 times of MPEG-4, said the spokesman.

At present, it is a bit too much for one DSP to encode SD quality H.264 in real-time, the spokesman added. Mitsubishi intends to develop a more elaborate encoding algorithm for better picture quality.