The new reference design also includes Maxim’s MG3500 H.264 video compression solution, which increases recording capacity on DVRs and supports multiple channels of low-latency, full D1 video. The reference design supports up to 16 channels of real-time capture and compression.
“Integrating Maxim’s industry-leading H.264 compression solution and our leading-edge video decoders and media bridge into a comprehensive hardware and software design platform allows video surveillance product manufacturers to reduce development costs and significantly shorten design cycles,” said Rene Hartner, vice president of marketing for Conexant’s Imaging and PC Media business. “This is especially important for the growing video surveillance market segment, where the ability to deliver cost-effective products more quickly can provide our customers with a competitive edge.”
“We’re pleased to team with Conexant to offer the security industry a high-performance reference design for recording-enabled video surveillance applications,” said Christopher Peters, director of business management for Maxim’s Multimedia business unit. “Strengthening our product offering with our jointly developed reference design reconfirms Maxim’s commitment to the video security market, and provides our customers with a superior design solution.”
The reference design also features Lattice Semiconductor’s ECP2 FPGAs, which are used to perform key video format conversions.
“Video surveillance is an important market for Lattice and we are happy to have worked with Conexant and Maxim on this reference design,” said Sean Riley, corporate vice president and general manager of High Density Solutions for Lattice. “The LatticeECP2 FPGA family provides high-value capabilities for video format conversion, as well as pre- and post-processing to bridge different digital codec and analog decoder devices. These capabilities, and the inherent flexibility of FPGAs, enable the rapid development of differentiated security and surveillance solutions.”
About Conexant’s and Maxim’s Video Surveillance Solutions:
Conexant’s CX25853 is the eight-channel video decoder, and enables multiple analog video streams to be captured and displayed simultaneously. Key features that improve video quality include the capability to acquire low-level video signals, horizontal and vertical scaling, and hue, brightness, saturation, and contrast controls. In addition, the high-density architecture lowers per-channel costs by approximately 35 percent, and substantially reduces board space requirements compared to using two separate four-channel devices.
The company’s companion CX25821 media bridge enables multi-channel, bi-directional uncompressed digital audio and video transfers to a host computer for preview, processing, or compression through the PCI Express (PCIe) interface. The CX25821 also acts as a bridge for compressed H.264 data from the MG3500 to the host via PCIe. PCIe is a serial bus technology that enables the cost-effective and scalable capture of high-bandwidth content on PCs and other consumer electronics devices.
Maxim’s MG3500 video codec supports de-interlacing and full D1 resolution, high profile, H.264 video encoding for the highest quality recording. It also simultaneously decodes video streams and combines multiple video images for viewing on high-definition displays. The MG3500’s extremely low power consumption helps guarantee system reliability.
Demonstrations highlighting the capabilities of the new reference design will be conducted during the ISC West trade show, which will be held at the Sands Expo and Convention center in Las Vegas, Nevada, from April 1 to April 3, 2009.
Conexant is a US-based supplier of semiconductor solutions for imaging, audio, video, and Internet connectivity applications.
Maxim is a US-based designer, manufacturer, and seller of high-performance semiconductor products for use in a wide variety of microprocessor-based equipment including video surveillance and security products.
