Barco Silex adds lightweight VC-2 compression to video production toolbox

Louvain‐la‐Neuve, Belgium & Las Vegas, USA – April 7, 2015 ‐‐ At the NAB conference, Barco Silex – the leading provider of video compression IP cores and FPGA-based video solutions – announced that it will add VC-2 LD (SMPTE 2042) to its offering of high-quality hardware cores for video compression. VC-2 is a light compression codec especially suited to manage high-definition video production and storage. This new core will give video equipment OEMs a cost-effective and fast way to make their tools HD/UHD-proof.

More and more, video is captured and managed in high-definition formats. At the same time, the transport may still depend on legacy equipment with a lower bandwidth. A lightweight visually lossless compression is the logic bridge. But for a widespread acceptance, the solution should be simple, have minimal latency, and allow a cost-effective implementation. VC-2 LD ticks all the boxes.

The VC-2 LD codec was originally developed at the BBC and later standardized as SMPTE 2042. It is a simple intra-frame wavelet codec that was specifically designed for low complexity and low latency. It combines light compression with high-quality lossless video. VC-2 is patent-free; it may be included in video production equipment without the potential costs, legal uncertainties, and practical difficulties of including other comparable codecs. VC-2 by its nature doesn’t require much computational resources. It is a thin solution that may be integrated in existing designs and low-end Altera and Xilinx FPGAs.

“Adding VC-2 LD to video equipment is a smart way to manage higher resolutions and frame rates, and still keep the required bandwidth, storage, and compute power within budget,” says Jean-Marie Cloquet, manager of Barco Silex’ video division. “With this new hardware core, equipment suppliers will be able to make their equipment future-proof without major redesigns and cost upgrades.”

More information about our new VC-2 algorithm

About Barco Silex

Barco Silex is the market leader in video processing, encryption and security IP cores and platforms as well as electronic design services (ASIC, FPGA, DSP, Board). The full-range of Barco Silex JPEG 2000 IP cores enable high-performance and high-quality coding and support a wide range of features and options: ultra-low latency, mathematically lossless compression, multichannel HD, 2K, 4K, 8K and, UHD. The video platforms integrate a full range of networking and video compression modules and enable customers to accelerate their product developments. Barco Silex security platforms and encryption cores deliver unrivaled speed performance and a compact footprint.