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Product of the Week

C-Cube DVxplore MPEG-2 Codec

C-Cube Delivers DVD Recording and Playback to Consumer PCs

The manufacturer says . . .

Chipcenter's Paul McGoldrick says . . .

In a striking move to enable industry-wide adoption of DVD-quality video recording at consumer price points, C-Cube Microsystems, introduced DVxplore, the world's first single-chip consumer MPEG-2 and DV codec. Supporting C-Cube in a unified vision for ease-of-use and proliferation of DVD-quality video on the PC and PC/TV platform, leading multimedia and PC product innovators Microsoft, Matrox, Creative Labs, and Ulead are endorsing DVxplore.

With DVxplore, C-Cube is the first to enable the consumer market for recordable DVD on the PC. Users of personal content creation, PC/TV and DVD-RAM applications will be the first to leverage DVxplore to record hours of DVD-quality video obtained from any video source whether TV, VCR, DV camcorder or analog camcorder. They will also be the first to edit and playback DVD-quality video on standard PCs and then store to DVD disk, web pages, e-mail, CD-R/W or PC hard disk drives.

"Empowering consumers to easily record and manipulate high-quality video on the PC represents a significant breakthrough for the multimedia industry at large," said Umesh Padval, president of C-Cube�s Semiconductor Division. "By offering DVD-quality recording and playback at consumer price points, we are leveraging our expertise in digital video technology to enable a new genre of applications on the PC."

Key Product Features

DVxplore�s programmable architecture and integrated PCI interface make it an optimized solution for PC applications. DVxplore enables PC video applications to include:

MPEG-2 and DV25 encoding and decoding;

Frame Accurate Editing of MPEG-2 and DV video;

Realtime DV to MPEG-2 transcoding;

Dual Stream MPEG-2 decoding and Realtime Rendering of Special Effects;

DVD playback with CSS decryption;

Variable Bitrate (VBR) Recording.

"C-Cube's DVxplore has the promise to create exciting new opportunities for DVD-quality video on the PC," notes Alain Legault, vice president of product development for Matrox Video Products Group. "C-Cube's ability to deliver this proven encoding technology at consumer price points will benefit product planning and development across the industry."

"C-Cube�s delivery of DVD-quality video recordability will expand the market opportunity for PC-DVD Encore," notes Hock Leow vice president of the Multimedia Division of Creative Labs. "C-Cube's breakthrough technology offers an opportunity to leverage DVD-quality video for higher levels of creativity across multiple applications."

Applications

Video Editing and Personal Content Creation

With DVxplore, users of video editing and personal content creation applications gain simplified video manipulation, improved image quality and interoperability of analog, DV and MPEG video formats. They can also engage in editing capabilities that were previously reserved for professional-level products, including dual-stream MPEG-2 editing, single-stream DV editing and realtime special effects such as fades, wipes and dissolves. DVxplore�s Variable Bitrate (VBR) Recording lets these users record hours of DVD-quality video to DVD-RAM, CD-R/W or a PC hard disk drive (one hour of video per gigabyte of hard drive space). DVxplore also enables ultra-low bitrate MPEG-1 encoding for video e-mail applications and web pages.

"C-Cube is helping to expand the market for desktop video with state-of-the-art products affordable for the consumer market," notes Liming Chen, President of Ulead Systems, a leading supplier of video editing and content creation applications. "We are pleased to partner with C-Cube on these exciting new video solutions."

PC/TV: Digital VCR

DVxplore expands the scope of existing video applications while creating an opportunity for entirely new applications and consumer devices. For example, DVxplore�s time-shifting capability enables PC users to record a TV show while simultaneously playing back video from any point in the recording. VCR-type controls allow users to rewind to the beginning of TV programs while they are still being recorded, as well as replay instantly. TV shows can be recorded by simply clicking on the on-screen electronic programming guide (EPG).

"The DVxplore chip, with support for MPEG encoding, is likely to deliver profound new capabilities in the way today's analog TV is handled on the PC," said Carl Stork, general manager of PC Hardware Strategy, Microsoft Corporation. "Rather than just displaying

TV in a window, the PC platform will be able to dramatically enhance the TV watching experience, by helping consumers to personalize their TV viewing in a way that suits them."

This is the breakthrough that the recordable DVD market has been waiting for in the jump to the PC. DVxplore will offer affordable translation of many previously-analog-only functionality into the digital video world. It is as much a jump in that respect as the Video Toaster was for the Amiga computer, and it will spawn dozens of editing/special-effects products for both the consumer and casual-professional market. It should be noticed, however, that something quite major is missing from this product and that will limit its dollar return: No audio. Nevertheless this product will be extremely successful and the next generation will, presumably, add on the audio. It is not that MPEG audio cannot be dealt with purely in software; it can, handily. But separate the two media and you get into serious synchronizing problems when you start to make products that look like, or behave like, editors.

Applications for video e-mail -- which I have termed as v-mail -- are also exciting directions that the market will now be able to take. And I for one will be delighted to take advantage of the ability to start watching the beginning of a recorded program while the recording is still taking place. Beats the heck out of either missing the start of a program, or of having to sit waiting on your hands for the rest of the time to pass before you can rewind! And if you skip the ads during playback you might even catch up to real time.

I have to wonder, however, as I have for audio CD. What does DVD-quality mean?

The DVxplore codec is shipping in this last quarter and we should start to see products at NAB in April 1999. It will be priced at $75 in volume.

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