VIDEO ON THE PC PLATFORM "BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS" ATI Technologies Inc. The Promise of Video Few developments in the evolution of computers hold more promise than the ability to incorporate video as an integral part of computer applications. Video is an engaging and "friendly" medium, as the success of television, VCR's and video rentals attests. As such, video, in conjunction with sound, graphics and animation, will redefine the way that people interact with computers. Video is part of the key to unlocking the PC's communication abilities, broadening the appeal of computers to the average person. Increased appeal benefits the industry through increased sales, and users by fulfilling a need unsatisfied by existing graphics and text- based applications. Video Applications Video has the potential to impact many facets of life both at work and in the home. PC Video will become an integral part of a wide variety of applications, including: 1. Training 2. Education 3. Business Presentations 5. Games 6. Video Conferencing 7. Kiosks 8. Video Editing At the heart of each of these applications lies the ability to communicate with emotional and visual impact in a compelling and informative way. A short video clip could be used to explain a complex health issue in a doctor's office, or, video could be added to a business presentation adding the visual impact of a life-like enemy aircraft bursting into flames after a successful missile launch, or, it could be a well-produced "home" movie documenting your child's first steps. This is the stuff of video, a domain previously exclusive to consumer electronics, now married to the power of the personal computer. Video Constraints But the marriage of video and PC's is not without its problems. It has taken time for the industry to mature to the point where video could become a viable mass-market addition to the computer fold. Traditionally, there have been several impediments to the development of video on the PC. These include: 1. Lack of standards 2. Insufficient processing power 3. Bandwidth limitations 4. Inadequate storage capabilities 5. High cost 6. Poor application support Fortunately, we have reached the stage where these implementation barriers are being broken down. It is necessary to understand how this is occurring to appreciate why 1993 may well mark the beginning of the reign of video on the PC. Standards The Macintosh platform has for some time enjoyed the availability of Apple's Quicktime as a viable standard upon which to develop a fairly broad base of video-capable applications. Partly because of this, the Macintosh is often viewed as a superior "multimedia" machine than the PC. In fall 1992, Microsoft began fighting back with the launch of Video for Windows using AVI (Audio/Video Interleaved) as a standardized file format for implementing video (and synchronized audio) solutions under Windows. Video for Windows requires no specialized hardware to operate. As an industry standard, it opens the door to both software and hardware developers to confidently embrace the file format to both develop a range of video-based applications and improve the standard's performance capability through enhanced technology. AVI stores audio and video data together ("interleaved") within a file. This simple format allows PC's with limited memory capability to playback Video for Windows "movies" since it isn't necessary for the system to pre-load large blocks of data; the system can simply play, then discard, each successive frame. This format also assists in reducing seek time for CD-ROM, resulting in more efficient playback using this technology. The AVI file format already shows a great deal of promise. Hundreds of ISV's (Independent Software Vendors) are already working on Video for Windows-based applications, and several IHV's (Independent Hardware Vendors) are offering hardware designed either to capture audio and video in AVI format or significantly improve the performance of Video for Windows playback. The development efforts of these two groups will establish the foundation for a radically new way of interacting with computers. Insufficient Processing Power The demands placed on the PC's CPU by a combination of graphics, sound, video and animation leave it little time to execute all of the other tasks it is responsible for. It has been only a relatively short time that 386 and 486 technology has been available, and even this kind of horsepower can become bogged down during execution of any meaningful video-based applications. More recently, hardware vendors have developed co-processed graphics boards which off-load the burdensome graphics manipulation tasks from the CPU, thereby resulting in dramatically improved performance for graphics-intensive applications such as Windows. ATI Technologies Inc., the leader in PC graphics products, has taken this approach one step further with the release of the Graphics Ultra+ and Graphics Ultra Pro Graphics and Multimedia Video Acceleration products. These products couple graphics acceleration capabilities with technology designed specifically to enhance Video for Windows playback, allowing users to stretch their video images to a larger, more usable size while maintaining smooth, realistic motion. This makes these products the "hardware of choice" for users wishing to take full advantage of video on the Windows platform. Quicktime support is planned for 1993. Bandwidth Limitations Video imposes enormous data demands on the PC. For example, even a relatively small "postage stamp" size video taxes the capabilities of a conventional PC. A one second 160x120, 16 bit video clip at 15 frames per second requires 576,000 bytes per second to be displayed. A more usable 640x480, 16 bit video clip at 30 frames per second (standard television frame rate) requires 18,432,000 bytes per second to be displayed, and this does not include audio. Clearly this is a task that can only be accomplished by two methods: increasing data bandwidth, or decreasing data intensity. New technologies, such as local bus, address the bandwidth issue to a certain degree. But even these developments cannot handle the data requirements of video. An area of development that is taking on critical importance when discussing video is data compression. Compression reduces the quantity of data required to represent a given image by eliminating data redundancy. This can be done through "lossless" methods (e.g. RLE) or "lossy" methods (e.g. DVI, JPEG, Px64). "Lossless" methods, as the name implies, allow data compression/decompression without any associated loss of information. This becomes important in such applications as medical imagery where complete reproduction of the original image is required. "Lossy" methods always suffer some degradation of image quality, but can be quite acceptable (and typically necessary) for most video implementations. Intel Corp. has developed a software version of their popular DVI compression/decompression technology called Indeo video that is supported under Video for Windows (as well as Quicktime and OS/2). Intel worked closely with ATI to design a special version of Indeo video targeted at ATI's Graphics Ultra+ and Graphics Ultra Pro (and other mach32 products). This driver, included with all of ATI's mach32 products, takes advantage of the power of these graphics and multimedia video accelerators to allow high performance playback of video files compressed using Indeo video technology. Data Storage As the above examples showed, the data requirements of video are enormous. Few conventional PC's could store more than a few seconds of uncompressed video. Obviously, this limits to a great degree the flexibility to develop meaningful video-based applications. Compression alleviates this problem to a degree, but what is really needed is a combination of compression and a larger capacity storage medium. One such storage medium has been around for a few years now, and is gaining rapid acceptance as the de facto standard for delivering data intensive applications to the user. This medium is CD-ROM. CD-ROM can deliver over 600Mb of data to the user, enough storage for about one hour of video (using DVI compression) or a lesser amount of combined video, graphics, text, animation and sound. CD-ROM transfers data at a rate of 150Kb per second (although faster drives are now becoming available). This means that, for 30 frames per second video, the average frame size must be 5Kb. Again, the need for compression is immediately apparent when we are dealing with video files whose frame size requirements are this small. High Cost Historically, the cost of video on the PC has been high. That should not be a surprise; most immature technologies are costly to implement to achieve reasonable quality results. But it is clear that the cost of implementing video is plummeting. The cost of entry for IHV's and ISV's in the video market has been reduced dramatically by the implementation of the Microsoft Video for Windows standard. This lessens the likelihood of standards fragmentation which can dilute the efforts of an industry to establish a critical mass of development resources around a common focal point. Other elements of the video system are coming down in cost as well. A degree of compression can be attained in software. In fact, this capability is included with Microsoft's Video for Windows standard. Additional software compression schemes will be announced by Microsoft over time. Although hardware compression can still be costly, history indicates that this will change as demand increases for video application development. Finally, CD-ROM drive sales are increasing dramatically with a parallel decrease in cost. Many systems now come standard with CD-ROM drives, and technological advances in this medium promise further reductions in the short term. This will continue to fuel the development of applications targeted to CD-ROM's, allowing video to gain additional prominence as an integral part of PC solutions. Application Support Already, Video for Windows has garnered a great deal of support from ISV's seeking ways to further differentiate their product offerings. Video promises an exciting way for games developers to further approximate reality, and a broad range of developers can be expected to capitalize on an emerging authoring segment centered around the Video for Windows standard. ATI Technologies Inc., in an effort to round out its multimedia offering to the marketplace, recently announced their MEDIAMERGE video editing tool; a Windows-based software tool designed to let users create "videos" which incorporate sound, graphics, text, animation and motion video. This product can be used to create effective business presentations, training tapes or any communication that would be enhanced through the use of multimedia. As the above discussion indicates, there have been a number of impediments to the successful implementation of video on the PC. It should be clear, however, that these barriers have all but been broken down, a process accelerated by the vision of an industry determined to improve upon the basic capabilities of the PC. ATI Technologies' participation in the realization of this vision is one more milestone in our mission of Perfecting the PC. mach32 MULTIMEDIA VIDEO ACCELERATION (MVA) DRIVERS QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q1. Exactly what do these drivers do? A. ATI's MVA drivers for the GRAPHICS ULTRA+ and GRAPHICS ULTRA PRO provide acceleration support for playback of Video for Windows (VFW) files. They allow Video for Windows images to be stretched to a larger, more usable size while maintaining smooth, more realistic playback and improved audio synchronization. The drivers also include a video control panel which allow adjustments to the hue, contrast, brightness and saturation of the video image. Lastly, the VFW run-time is included in GRAPHICS ULTRA+ and GRAPHICS ULTRA PRO packages along with a sample video clip, providing an out-of-the-box VFW playback solution (a VFW Playback Starter Kit). Best of all, there is no extra charge for this functionality. It is an integral part of all of the mach32 products. Q2. Okay, but what is Video for Windows? A. Video for Windows is Microsoft's new standard that brings motion video to the desktop (capture, compression, editing, decompression and playback). It is based on the AVI (Audio-Video Interleaved) file format and offers a standard way of "interleaving" audio and video together within a single file. This provides a single focus for developers to begin writing applications that incorporate video. It is similar in nature to Apple's "Quicktime" that has been available on the Mac platform for some time. Video for Windows is important because it will help bring video into the mainstream. Q3. Why did ATI feel the need to improve on the performance of VFW? A. Because VFW has limitations. Due to the huge amounts of data involved in manipulating video images, the standard for VFW is 160x120 resolution at 15 frames per second (fps). At that 160x120 resolution, the video clip plays back fine (i.e. it achieves its designated 15 fps). But a 160x120 image is small, and will not be usable in many circumstances. Ideally, you would like to be able to stretch that image to a more usable size. However, stretching the image taxes the capabilities of the data bus and display system, resulting in poor video playback (dropped frames, resembling a NASA video clip) and choppy audio - in short, unacceptable performance. ATI has always been a leader in Windows acceleration, and knew that video will become an important PC development in the future. It was therefore only natural that ATI applied its skills to improving the playback performance of VFW files to position itself as the leader in this emerging area. Q4. What is compression and what does it have to do with Video for Windows? A. As mentioned before, video is a data-intensive medium (for example: 30 seconds of an uncompressed 160x120, 16 bit, 15 fps VFW clip would occupy app. 17.3 MB!). Therefore, one of the best ways to handle that data is to compress it before it's stored. That means it takes up less hard disk space and is also easier to move across the data bus. Indeo video is one of three methods of compressing and decompressing video under VFW. The other two are called Microsoft Video 1 and Microsoft RLE. The reason Indeo video is important is that it is a scalable architecture in a number of dimensions. First of all, it is stored as a 24 bit image. Therefore, upgrading your video card to 24 bit capability would allow you to take advantage of that. The other codecs are limited to 8 or 16 bit color. Secondly, Indeo video is scalable in terms of capture. In other words, you can buy capture hardware (such as Intel's ActionMedia II board) which will allow you to capture and playback at 30 fps in a higher resolution. The other codecs do not have widespread availability of real time capture hardware. Finally, performance scales with CPU. Therefore, upgrading your processor will result in improved performance. In fairness, the other codecs scale with CPU as well, to varying degrees. ATI is the only graphics manufacturer in the world to develop this special driver with Intel. Q5. What other software support does ATI provide for VFW acceleration? A. In addition to accelerating Indeo video compressed files, ATI accelerates the other two file formats as well. This is important, because people aren't likely to know what compression format was used to compress their video in any given application (and they shouldn't have to). This means that we transparently accelerate any VFW-based application. Q6. What kind of quality can we expect from accelerated VFW playback? A. That's a good, and difficult question. First of all, let's differentiate between absolute performance and relative performance. From an absolute performance perspective, some users may not find VFW acceptable. This is because we live in the age of television and users are accustomed to large, colorful images being shown to them at 30 frames per second with high quality audio. References to television are bound to result in a poor perception of VFW. Remember, VFW clips are typically 160x120, 15 fps. When that image is stretched, two things happen: the image becomes pixelated and it slows down. This is the nature of software-only playback of video today. Even with our accelerator drivers, the image will still be slowed somewhat; particularly when the image is stretched to full screen in high-screen resolutions. We'll discuss what impacts performance in more detail later. Many people, however, are very happy with the ability to view even a small "postage stamp" image on their screen. Video is still very much a novelty on the PC, and this can suppress a great deal of the image quality concerns until further hardware and software development can assist the performance. If someone wants broadcast-quality video, they can watch television or invest in several thousand dollars worth of PC hardware. VFW is the starting point for bringing video to the PC, and it is very effective at doing that. The reality is that even small size video can add a tremendous amount of informational content to a presentation or an application. That is what VFW was designed for. Now let's talk about relative performance. Without a doubt, ATI's MVA accelerator drivers will deliver better frame rate playback for a given image size than any accelerator on the market. From a relative performance perspective, then, ATI is offering the best performance of VFW video images without going out and buying expensive video hardware. Q7. What factors impact playback performance? A. There are a lot of them. Performance will be impacted negatively by the following: 1. A low CPU speed 2. Larger image stretch size 3. Larger native image size (eg. 320x240 vs. 160x120) 4. Higher screen resolution 5. Increased color depth 6. Low RAM 7. Low display board memory 8. DRAM vs. VRAM 9. More than one video playing at a time 10. Reading from a CD-ROM or floppy drive 11. Various bus architectures (eg. ISA vs. Local Bus) There are likely others as well. The point is that playback performance is not easily quantified, and will vary wildly from user to user. You can be assured, however, that you are getting the best video performance possible from a graphics accelerator product when you are using a GRAPHICS ULTRA+ or GRAPHICS ULTRA PRO. Q8. What other performance issues should I be aware of? A. Different codecs are targeted at different CPU's. For example, Indeo video is targeted at 486 systems, Video 1 at 386 systems, and RLE at 286 and higher (RLE, by the way, is typically used to compress animations. It is not an efficient compressor of video). Q9. What modes are supported for video acceleration? A. We currently support video acceleration in 16 bit color mode or 8 bit palette manager off color mode. Other modes revert to unaccelerated video playback, but are otherwise usable. We strongly recommend using 16 bpp as the mode for video acceleration. Quality video images require 16 bpp minimum for realism. We do not support 4 bpp mode because this is a poor mode for video. We do not accelerate in 24 bpp mode because the data requirements are too high in his mode. Even though we might be able to run video images faster than non- accelerated playback, the overall performance would still be unacceptable. In terms of screen resolution, we accelerate in all of them. However, increases in screen resolution does result in lower playback performance as previously mentioned. Again, we strongly recommend 640x480 for maximum performance. Q10. How can I get these drivers? A. The drivers are available on Compuserve, on the ATI BBS, and from ATI Customer Support. Q11. Is ATI planning on additional features/performance enhancements related to video technology? A. ATI will continue to be a leader in multimedia video support. We will continually improve the video capabilities of our products over time. Whether the improvements are software or hardware based, ATI will continue to provide support to existing and new customers through the life of their ATI products. One of the important things to remember is that we are at the beginning of a sequence of events that will merge video and PC technology in increasingly meaningful ways. ATI's role is to make this process better and faster for our customer base.