PINNER, UK - Bluefish444, a maker of uncompressed video cards for Windows operating systems, and Main Concept, a provider of codec technology and video applications, announced compatibility between Main Concept's Direct Show filters for compression codecs and Bluefish444's Direct Show filters in a variety of schemes.
Compatibility between Bluefish444 and Main Concept's SD and HD compression codecs include MPEG 1, MPEG 2 LGOP and I-frame only, H264, DV, DVCPro, and M-JPEG2000, and cover a range of professional video, prosumer and digital cinema applications.
Numerous OEM developers employ Bluefish444 video cards for many types of OEM applications. Until recently, most of these used uncompressed media. For many OEM projects, however, it is preferable to use compressed video, as it requires reduced disk space needed for storage, particularly for HD, as well as reduced data rates across transmission paths.
With the increased power of today's host CPUs, the trend has been toward the use of software codecs, which both reduce cost and allow for flexibility of design. If a new codec is created, it can be used simply by changing the software. It is also possible to use multiple codecs in one design.
MainConcept, which has a US subsidiary in Beechwood, OH, produces a variety of video compression engines; these codecs are available as Direct Show filters. Bluefish444 announced its Direct Show filters approximately 18 months ago.