Multimedia in embedded systems

It is hard to imagine the development of consumer electronics without various multimedia capabilities. Many portable devices offer not only audio and video playback from local storage but also provide nice audio and video capture features as well as media streaming from Internet.

Codecs

Our engineers have hands-on experience with many advanced multimedia codecs and compression algorithms:

Audio compression: MP3, WMA, Vorbis, Speex, AMR
Video compression: MPEG2, MPEG4, Theora
Still image compression: JPEG, PNG, JPEG2000

JPEG2000

JPEG2000 is an advanced image compression algorithm which uses wavelet transform opposite to discrete cosine transform used in JPEG standard. JPEG2000 coding algorithm has the following advantages over traditional JPEG:

better picture quality on low bitrates;
no image artifacts containing 8x8 pixel blocks as in JPEG pictures;
progressive image decoding allows to display an image in lower quality while only a part of data is downloaded;
regions of interest, where image quality may be better than in other image areas;
good picture quality when the data transfer is performed in non-reliable networks or radio links;
lossless and lossy compression;
alpha channel and transparency support;
flexible JPEG2000 file format supports embedding color maps and metadata
license and patent free technology.

JPEG2000 is widely used in video surveillance, security, digital video recorders (DVR), storage systems for medical and satellite image data.

Promwad company develops various software and hardware solutions based on JPEG2000 image coding standard:

Single-chip JPEG2000 codec ADV202 / ADV212 from semiconductor vendor "Analog Devices";
Software JPEG2000 image encoding with Blackfin digital signal processor;
PC software for viewing and processing of JPEG2000 images and movies.

ADV212 has some distinctive features:

Unique single chip JPEG2000 encoder and decoder solution;
Multi-chip master/slave connection to enable HD video compression and decoding;
Low power consumption allows mobile portable applications;
16-bit and 32-bit interface to host processor.

Digital Rights Management - DRM

The development of digital technologies allowed to reproduce digital multimedia content without loss of quality and pointed out licensing and copyright protection problems. Multimedia content providers require not only licensing agreements to get connected to their services but to implement digital rights management (DRM) in the electronic device.

The usage of GNU/Linux operating system and Open Source components in electronic devices does not imply any restriction on the usage of commercially licensed software modules. For example, if needed, a company can sign a licensing agreement with Microsoft, pay for license, get WMA or Windows DRM software modules and port them to Linux or other RTOS on target hardware platform. Definitely one should pay attention to license restrictions, for example do not mix GPL and closed commercial source in a single piece of software. Paying royalties per device is a usual practice too.

Our engineers have in-depth knowledge and experience in DRM integration and porting to embedded systems:

Windows DRM
RealNetworks Helix DRM

Audio and Video Streaming

In todays world the word "mobile device" means an electronic device without binding to PC or home CD library. Advances in wireless technology make mobile devices being constantly online. Users are interested not only in text but in multimedia content too, thus applying higher requirements to data transfer rates. Network infrastructure is being improved and live video and audio streaming become quite usual in mobile electronic devices.

Our engineers implemented MP3 and WMA audio streaming via HTTP and RTP protocols into several successful projects. These solutions are used in modern audio devices such as internet radios, streaming media players, IP video cameras and some others.