Rhozet Carbon Coder to Support Panasonic AVC-Intra HD

Harmonic said this week that its Rhozet Carbon Coder video transcoding platform will now support Panasonic’s AVC-Intra HD compression technology. The coder from the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company can provide real-time transcoding of HD content using the AVC-Intra codec as a standard feature.

The intra-frame compression technology, developed to provide more enhanced image quality and flexibility in broadcast HD production, was designed to enable more efficient compression without image degradation.

The AVC-Intra compression scheme complies with the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) open standard, and provides 10-bit, 4:2:2 full-raster compression (the same bit-rate as DVCPRO HD) that Harmonic said achieves DVCPRO-quality at half the bit-rate—which, in effect, could create a new level of HD production while lowering storage and distribution costs. During its design phase, Harmonic said, AVC-Intra was optimized for broadcast and production use (and not low-bandwidth distribution).

Harmonic said the Rhozet Carbon Coder with AVC-Intra support will be available in April 2008, just in time for the NAB Show, April 14-17.