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Advanced H.264 Video Compression Technology Now Available on Smart Camera Development PlatformPETALUMA, Calif., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Meeting the needs of image processing developers and OEMs for a high performance development platform with low bit rate, high-quality video, Apollo Imaging Technologies and W&W Communications (WWComs) announce the integration of the Apollo AIT300 image processing platform and the WWComs' H.264 Baseline Profile codec, BC-264. The AIT300, based on the Texas Instruments TMS320DM642 DSP-based digital media processor, is a fully featured, IP-enabled, three Megapixel smart camera suitable for OEM production, reference designs, or image processing development platforms using the full suite of TI tools and third party products. Apollo's AIT300 camera addresses a rapidly growing surveillance market with a solution for a high demand application. "The video processing engine and programmable nature of the DM642 makes it an ideal processor for video surveillance applications," said Yvonne Cager, video surveillance solutions manager, TI. "As codecs evolve and improve, developers, such as Apollo, can upgrade their systems to the latest codecs without having to start from scratch, saving hardware costs and development time." "More and more surveillance solution providers are placing the processing power to encode the video in the camera itself rather than in a traditional digital video recorder. Apollo's reference design is a key enabler for this technology's migration. H.264 encoding technology is a perfect fit," said Lars, Herlitz, CEO of WWComs. The benefits of using H.264 over H.261 and H.263 are numerous and including up to a 65 percent decreased bandwidth consumption at exceptional picture quality. Apollo Imaging Technologies developed the AIT300 as a self-contained image processing system for security, biometric and industrial vision applications requiring intelligence in the camera. The AIT300 features the 600Mhz DM642; up to 256M DRAM, 32M flash, 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0, RS232/485, audio in/out and general purpose I/O. It can utilize either a built-in three-megapixel sensor or external NTSC/PAL video. The AIT300 offers IEEE802.3af compliant Power over Ethernet. Subset configurations or custom designs are available, based on quantity. The WWComs' BC-264 Codec meets the International Telecommunications Union standards and runs full D1 resolution with a constant or variable bit rate range of 64kbps to 4mbps. About Apollo Imaging Technologies, Inc.: Apollo Imaging Technologies was founded in 2002 by a group of veterans in DSP video processing applications. Apollo Imaging serves OEMs and image processing developers requiring high performance TI DSP hardware platforms. For more information, see http://www.apollo-image.com/ About WWComs, Inc. W&W Communications, Inc. was founded in December 2001 by a group of leading professionals from the Video, Networking and Telecommunication industry with over 60 years combined experience. WWComs believes that standard-based, media-rich network solutions will lead the way to the next generation Wireless & Wireline Communications and associated new applications. To meet the challenge, WWComs combines its proprietary, extensive algorithm optimizations for the hot new video coding standard H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, with the most advanced processor specific parallel optimizations to set new benchmarks in quality and efficiency for video codecs for all key video markets: Broadcasting, Video Conferencing, Video Surveillance, Distance Learning, Video on Demand (VoD), Web casting, Smart Phones, etc. For more information, visit WWComs' web site at http://www.wwcoms.com/ . About the Texas Instruments Third Party Program: W&W Communications and Apollo Imaging Technologies are members of the TI TMS320(TM) third party program. With more than 650 independent companies and consultants, TI's customers have easy access to a broad range of application software, development hardware and software and consulting services. For more information on the TI third party program, please visit http://www.ti.com/3p . Apollo Imaging Technologies; W&W Communications, Inc. CONTACT: media, Rich McClellan of Apollo Imaging Technologies, Inc.,+1-707-780-9477, or [email protected] ; or Ronald Allard of W&WCommunications, Inc., +1-408-481-0264, or [email protected] Web site: http://www.apollo-image.com/http://www.wwcoms.com/http://www.ti.com/3p |