Image Power places bets on nascent ISO multimedia format standard

A small Vancouver-based R&D company is ready to hit the market this September with new compression technologies that promise to deliver faster Internet content, based on a new global standard for still pictures and movies. Image Power Inc has been working with the University of British Columbia since 1996 to develop its image compression products and IP components. Last week, the company released a trial version of its new MJPEG2000-compliant software designed to work with common multimedia players. The standard, which will soon be finalized by the International Standards Organization (ISO), is expected to eventually replace the current JPEG format. Executives hope their ongoing work with the MJPEG2000 will give them an early market advantage in selling and licensing software development toolkits and compression technologies to third-parties. The main advantage of the new standard is its ability to deliver much higher compression rates, which results in smaller file sizes but no loss of quality. Images can also be downloaded in various levels of detail, with each level building on the image a user has already downloaded without having to re-send the entire image. In applications such as wireless multimedia, that means extremely small files can be incorporated into web pages, and the user can decide whether they want to quickly build up the quality of the image. Perhaps most importantly, says Image Power’s business development manager, the JPEG2000 standard has been developed to survive in "lossy" networks. With traditional JPG files, a single lost packet can ruin an image completely – a real risk in over-the-air transmissions where large files are cumbersome. "It’s not that JPEG is a particularly bad technology," says Jeff Brooks. "It was just never designed for high rates of compression. It was essentially standardized and finalized in and around 1992. Back then, wireless was certainly not in the public mind’s eye for transferring data around. Of course, 10 years later that’s much different." Brooks says the new ISO JPEG2000 standard, and its full motion cousin the MJPEG2000 format, will be popular for next-generation wireless networks. The standard itself is non-proprietary, meaning Image can’t actually license it. But, Brooks says the company can do custom implementations of the format into applications and custom silicon chips. The company recently licensed its JPEG2000 codec for use in Texas Instruments’ new lines of digital signal processors. Besides wireless networks, Brooks says the format will likely be used in high-powered applications such as medical imaging. He says some devices such as scanners and cameras will also have the JPEG2000 codec built in, though the high compression rates and fault-tolerance mean some devices will need more computer power before they can take advantage of the standard. Image Power is hoping to generate significant revenues from building JPEG2000 into new chips, PC add-on cards and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). "We’re very intimate with the technology," Brooks told CNM. "We understand it as one should when one’s been working with it as long as we have. We can do the customization work…we know what can and can’t be done with the standard." He says the company’s codec has been integrated into the standard as a reference tool to help programmers develop new applications for the format. The company’s latest move was the introduction of a new video streaming technology using MJPEG2000 dubbed mVideoTV. The technology produces encoded bit streams that the company claims are at least as good as DVD, with all the advantages of the JPEG2000 format. Users can test the technology by downloading and installing the company’s codec for either Windows Media Player, or Real Player, then sampling a series of MJPEG2000 clips from the company’s demonstration website at www.motionjpeg2000.tv

Image Power places bets on nascent ISO multimedia format standard

News | 07/12/2001 4:00 am EDT

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