Pioneering Scottish research makes its mark in the USA

Universal Video DecoderWork on a ground-breaking Universal Video Decoder by a research team at Robert Gordon University has attracted international attention from California’s Silicon Valley.

In September, Professor Iain Richardson from the University’s Centre for Video Communication delivered a keynote speech about the Decoder to the International System on Chip Conference in California.

Video coding is an enabling technology for an ever-increasing range of applications, with standards such as MPEG-2 and H.264 considered essential to many of these applications.

However, there are problems associated with standards-based video coding. The long timescale between proposing a new coding technique and its implementation in consumer systems means there is an increasing need for decoders to support multiple, alternative standards.

A brand new concept, the Universal Video Decoder uses a new approach to video coding – dynamically configurable video compression. This means the Decoder will automatically reconfigure itself to decode any new or existing video formats.

This approach has the potential to shorten the time-to-market for new video coding concepts; to reduce the cost of supporting multiple video formats in consumer devices such as Blu-Ray players and mobile phones; and to enable significant gains in compression performance through dynamic adaptation.

For further information, visit the School of Engineering's Centre for Video Communications website