Vintho, Gradually things have changed for the CUBE. People besides us, like CSFB, and Ralph Acampura say nice things about them. Seligman has taken up a big position. Forbes is even putting
in print material that says DIVI and CUBE aren't such bad places to invest after all, lickpins to the future. Linkpins to the future- Something like someone from the SI thread might write. Been waiting for them to separate out the MPEG silicon from the DRAM and other companies. Now if CUBE can only deliver the goods.
Chromac got me thinking about the DVx. Can it be....... the fourth wave of digital video the first to hit the beach?
emediapro.net
After reading this essay I realized how important the success of the DVR is for CUBE. It's crucial. For our sakes I hope they do it right!
The Moving Picture
Edit in MPEG-2? When Push Comes to Shove
Jan Ozer
EMedia Professional, January 1999
Copyright © Online Inc.
I have a rather unsentimental perspective on my books, acquired during my first post-publishing
celebration. One well-meaning friend held up the 560-page tome and gushed, "Gosh, Jannie, you
must be very proud when you look at that book."
"Actually, Erika," I said, "when I look at that book, three months after my last submission to the
publisher, all I see is a skinny ATM card." And my royalty statements are hardly the only evidence
that the market for corporate and consumer digital video has never been all that hot.
We've seen three waves seeking to crack open this prosumer/ consumer marketplace to date. The
first wave of ISA boards in 1994-1995 failed because computers were underpowered and the video
looked awful. The second wave of PCI-based boards in 1996-1997 hoped to leverage the
streaming video market, but also failed miserably because the video looked awful. The third wave
was parallel port MPEG-1 encoders, which achieved some success, but was too little, too late.
Vendors in these waves employed a push strategy-we push these products out there, folks will buy
them. They pushed and shoved and advertised to no avail, because push strategies only work when
they address pent-up demand. A great example is the market for sub-$1,000 PCs, now growing like
a weed after uncovering demand for email, Web surfing, online shopping, and World Wrestling
Federation pay-per-view over the Internet. Unfortunately, none of the first three waves of video
products uncovered a hidden demand for consumers to edit and publish sub VHS-quality video
And we all learned together-author and video developer alike-that "if we build it, they will come"
works only in the movies.
edit in MPEG-2?
Now comes the fourth wave, a series of products from C-Cube Microsystems designed to convince
professionals, prosumers, and consumers to edit in MPEG-2-a questionable proposition, because
MPEG-2 delivers comparatively high quality at relatively low data rates, but uses interframe and
intraframe compression, which typically produces more artifacts than intraframe-only technologies
like Motion-JPEG.
This interframe compression also makes it tough for video editors like Adobe Premiere and Ulead's
MediaStudio to work with complete frame accuracy. For this reason, while MPEG-2 is a great
distribution format-the basis of DVD-Video-it's never been a great development format.
C-Cube's response is that MPEG-2 is the broadcast format for digital TV, so MPEG-2 editing will
catch on in the broadcast space, while the file size savings will appeal to prosumers and consumers.
After all, if MPEG-2 is four times more compact than Motion-JPEG, then you can do four times the
work in the same disk space, and use lower-performance hard disk drives, to boot.
Plus, C-Cube insists the quality of its MPEG-2 solution is as good as Motion-JPEG, so there's no
downside. And instead of the traditional push-and-shove strategy, C-Cube is using a kinder, gentler,
spoonful-of-sugar strategy. In non-Mary Poppins speak, C-Cube's family of chips gives me
something that I really, really want, something worth buying even if MPEG-2 editing is a bust. If
they're right about the MPEG-2 quality, so much the better. For example, in the professional/
prosumer space, C-Cube is shipping the DVxpress-MX chipset at a price point that enables
$1,000- to $2,000-priced cards. It's also the first chip to accept and interchange both DV and
MPEG-2 video formats, enabling, for example, real-time capture of DV video and conversion into
MPEG-2.
On its face-if you don't believe in MPEG-2 editing or deliver your content in MPEG-2 video-format
interchangeability is a big yawner, and these products make little sense. However, C-Cube has
thrown in a couple of very impressive spoonfuls of sugar. First, the DVxpress is one of the first chips
to handle both DVCPro from Panasonic and DVCam from Sony. Even better, the DVxpress is a
dual-stream codec that enables real-time rendering of transitions and other special effects-the Holy
Grail of most prosumer DV videographers. This feature alone will enable boards built around the
DVxpress to take the DV market by storm, where their owners will no doubt experiment with
MPEG-2 and use it if C-Cube's quality claims bear fruit.
In the consumer space, C-Cube's recently announced DVxplore chip delivers DV/MPEG-2
interoperability at the sub-$300 price point, albeit without dual-stream, DV capabilities. So products
based on these boards will accept input from all traditional analog and DV cameras, edit in DV or
MPEG-2, and output back to the camera in DV format for transfer to VHS tape or in MPEG-2 for
digital distribution.
MPEG-2 editing will be frame-accurate, with support from Ulead out of the chute. And, combined
with a TV tuner, the chip lets you record "Frasier" while you're working out at the gym and play it
back at broadcast quality. Of course, the DVxplore will also decode DVD-Video, allowing it to
perform triple duty as a DVD decoder.
Most impressively, DVxplore marks the debut of "no apologies" digital video-broadcast-quality clips
you can show around without apologizing for artifacts. And though it won't propel my book to
Clancy-like sales numbers, it may make the fourth wave of digital video the first to hit the beach
Those digital VHS machines, both PC and CE, are the key to the kind of sales figures we need. AB should just show one of them for 5 minutes or so tomorrow,......Anybody else a little nervous about tomorrow?
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