The annoying thing is that, especially for Windows, there have long been a large number of consumer-priced video encoding hardware devices available. But they are nearly always geared towards capturing the video via a cable from some external analog source, rather than your finished edited video thats sitting on the computer already. As soon as you get to DV or various high end formats, the price rockets. And high definition, h264 and other developments mean the bar is always being raised.
And thats why I unfortunately dont expect this chip to signal a change, its not a new class of device, just the latest spec. Chips that did the same sort of thing existed in the past but for previous generations of resolution & codec. Meanwhile CPU power of computers has increased at least as fast as new codecs & resolutions have become popular, and Id guess that by the time really fast internet makes people able to routinely share stuff in high definition resolutions, cpu speeds may have reached the level where encoding at those resolutions is about as timeconsuming as encoding to 320x240 currently is. Its a shame someone doesnt try to use this chip or similar to offer the sort of hardware-enhanced encoding speeds that you seek, you arent alone. But I bet somewhere in pro land this sort of thing is in the mega $ bracket, and the transition to the idea that it might be something the masses want, and will pay extra dollar for in large enough numbers to justify destroying the previous price point of that industry. I mean technically this chip could do whats needed, although Im unsure if there are architectural problems in terms of where youd wire it up to, either hardware-wise or in the os's send video through encoding pipeline. Microsoft are pushing their vc-1 format, thats now a standard, pretty hard these days and like big corpo customers, I wonder if the have any hardware encoding technologies available? Im far more certain of that chip making its way into set-top-pvr's and the like, because it largely takes the role of the CPU in them, the encoding/decoding compontent in such devices has likely always been one of the major costs, whereas its currently a non-existent cost in computers. And $250 is probably more than or close to the profit margin of most machines, its an extra cost that wont be stomached. Im out of date with how much power CPUs consume these days, but its quite likely it could be more efficient than a CPU, and so would be potentially attractive for increasing battery life when watching movies, which is one possible angle that these things could find themselves into computers one day. And if the economy continues in the same mode for more years, the cost of this particular encoder/decoder will surely fall. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, andrew michael baron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Good points. When talking about an order of $ in the hundreds of > dollars, I guess cheap is relative, especially considering how much > time you may spend in your life encoding and how expensive it would > of been a few years ago. > > I imagine a line a computers that cost more (but still consumer), > including options that are built more for editing. > > Apple in particular has had an important role in Video over the years > and it would make sense to me that they would integrate something > like this as a priority. > > If its true as you say that it will make its way into various set- > top, tv devices, hard disk recorders, etc, then I think it will be > cheap enough to stick in a home computer too. > > Regards, > Drew > > > On May 21, 2007, at 10:47 PM, Steve Watkins wrote: > > > Interesting. > > > > Its not cheap though, seems more like a high-end encoder/decoder to > > me. For example it supports High profile, which is a superior profile > > that quicktime and the apple TV dont support (as opposed to baseline > > profile at the other end of the spectrum, which the ipod can support). > > > > Cost wise, I wonder what Apple computer it would mek it into. Likely > > would cost more than the CPU. Seems to have a nice low energy use > > though which makes me happy, it will make its way into various set-top > > tv devices, had disk recorders, etc, maybe blueray & hddvd players too > > as I think they use high-profile h264. > > > > Looking at history, hardware mpeg2 decoder chips did not get added to > > computers very often, you could get add-in cards with them in, back > > when CPU power wasnt enough to handle DVD mpeg2, but never a mass > > market product. These days in PC land, a lot of the 3d graphics cards > > offer drivers & software that uses the power of the graphics card > > processors to do video decoding. So if you have the right 3d card that > > isnt a cheap basic model, eg you have a nice gaming system, the cpu > > shares the burden of high-def h264 decoding with the cpu. But all the > > time there is the continuous improvements in CPUs, these days usually > > due to extra cores. So wherever possible computer manufacturers avoid > > the extra cost of dedicated decoder/encoder chips, and rely on cpu and > > software to do the job. The opposite is true for devices like ipod, > > where cpu is low powered and decoding is best offloaded to a dedicated > > chip. > > > > I hope Im wrong, decoding works fine on my macbook but Ive always > > wanted some dedicated hardware to assist with encoding, its certainly > > a burden. But that market was always kept small and expensive when I > > looked, addon cards for fast encoding often cost a lot, or cheap ones > > ddnt give quality as good as decent software encoder. The downside of > > realtime encoding is its usually 1-pass, wheras 2 or more pass > > encoding has some distinct advantages. > > > > Cheers > > > > Steve Elbows > > > > --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Drew" <andrew@> wrote: > > > > > > For a look into the near future: > > > > > > Fujitsu is releasing a chip on July 1st that appears to encode HD in > > real time for only $247. > > > > > > A chip like this could forseeably make it's way into an Apple > > computer this year. Pair that with > > > fiber optics and next January's CES conference could be full of > > people streaming high quality > > > video in realtime over the net. Could be pretty boring to see but > > the implication otherwise are > > > pretty neat. > > > > > > http://tinyurl.com/2833lt > > > > > > > > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
