Parvus is shipping a PC/104-Plus MPEG-4 audio/video encoder card that supports up to four simultaneous video inputs. The MPEG104+ makes use of an onboard microcontroller to manage computationally intensive video compression, and is supported under Linux, among other embedded OSes, according to the company.

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Parvus describes the MPEG104+ as a “real-time MPEG-4 video framegrabber/compressor/encoder” that captures up to four high-quality analog video and audio streams at once, encodes them in compressed MPEG-4 or AVI formats, and sends them to an embedded computer over a 32-bit PCI bus. It encodes video at up to 30 frames per second in one of three modes: one camera at full screen; two cameras at half screen; or four cameras at one quarter screen. The board also has an analog video output channel for real-time monitoring of the encoding process.

Parvus lists the following key features and specifications for the MPEG104+:

• Encoding Format — MPEG-4 (ISO/IEC 14496-2)
• PAL Compression Rates — 352×288 at 100fps, 720×576 at 25 fps
• NTSC Compression Rates — 352×240 at 120fps, 720×480 at 30fps
• System File Formats — AVI, MP-4
• Video Compression Modes — Supports I, P, B

Price and Availability

The MPEG104+ is currently in stock and is priced at $603 each in volume orders of 100-plus units, according to Parvus.

 
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