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Nancy Goes Head-to-Head With MPEG-4

Posted by Hemos on from the battle-head-to-head dept.

Justin Rossi writes: "EE Times has an article about Nancy, 'the lightest video codec' which is taking Asia by storm and finally bringing streaming Video to handheld devices. What I wonder is how it shall fare against MPEG-4, Ogg Tarkin, and MC-10."

7 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. What a strange name for a video codec by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Nancy"? Was it named after some coders girlfriend or something?

    From a CPU (and therefore an electrical) standpoint the algorithm is better because it uses much simpler mathematics. But I wonder what the video quality would look like. Is it comparable to Mpeg4 based codecs like DivX? This is great for handheld devices, but I doubt it'll make much of a dent on the desktop unless the image quality is a lot better. We already have way more CPU power then we know what to do with :P

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    1. Re:What a strange name for a video codec by ayjay29 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Nancy"? Was it named after some coders girlfriend or something?

      Can't decide if you are sexist, assuming coders cannot be female, or I am homophonic, assuming coders cannot be lesbians.

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  2. Probably not by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The benefit of this codec is it's ease of computation, not necessarily it's image quality/bandwidth ratio.

    Anyway, since it's so quick to encode (you can do it real-time on a 50mips machine... so cell phone, pda, whatever) You'll probably be able to convert the files as fast as you can copy them to the device, or if you want to stream the videos to a cell phone you can have your computer decode them and then reencode them for broadcast.

    Unfortunately this thing seems to be a lot more tied up legaly then MPEG :( It could be a cool way to put videos on my iPaq (Mpeg is still a little choppy)

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  3. Re:Hmmmm by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, we never had the bandwidth for real videophones.. they were all choppy as fuck when they came out, but now that we do have the bandwidth people are doing video conferencing with webcams and such all the time. It just isn't exciting anymore.

    A cell phone with a cam and enough bandwidth (read 3g networks) might actually be popular since you'll actually be able to get a decent video feed.

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  4. Market wont accept... by macemoneta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...video conferencing on the desktop, which has been available for years. Why does anyone think that they will want it in their cell phone?

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  5. This is NOT going to replace DivX ;-) by tweakt · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Nancy is aiming to displace MPEG-4 in applications that demand limited code space and extended battery life.

    It's a low power (power=not much cpu required) designed for mobile devices.

    The codec will run "even if CPU power is not high," said Kato. "A 50-Mips CPU can compress and decompress video at 30 frames per second with QCIF [176 x 144-pixel] resolution [using Nancy].

    QCIF is a postage stamp, don't get excited... my freakin webcam can do that type of compression right now, this acheives a smaller size I'm guessing. As far as quality is concerned, I don't think thats the main focus.

    Their goal is real-time, and low power cpu, and perhaps low bitrate... not highest quality, lowest overall size (MPEG4/DivX, etc)..

  6. Not MPEG4 killer... by dserpell · · Score: 5, Informative
    Reading the article:
    MPEG-4 uses discrete-cosine-transform and motion-estimation technologies. By contrast, Nancy uses only the four fundamental processes of arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), along with comparison and bit-shift operation. This keeps its operation light, said Koichi Kato, chief technology officer at Office Noa.
    This is nosense... DCT is also only addition and multiplications (no divisions, so it have to be faster...) Also:
    The codec will run "even if CPU power is not high," said Kato. "A 50-Mips CPU can compress and decompress video at 30 frames per second with QCIF [176 x 144-pixel] resolution [using Nancy]. There is no other video codec in a software form that can encode and decode." The program for real-time video compression and decompression takes 30 to 40 kbytes of memory, "and consumes about one-tenth of the power compared with MPEG-4 operation," he added
    He shoud take a look at ffmpeg's libavcodec. In 240kbytes you have coder and decoder for: Video MPEG1/2/4, MSMPEG4, MJPEG, H263, RealVideo, AC3, Audio MPEG-Layer3... And with assembler routines for x86 and arm cpu's. Getting 30fps of QCIF at 50mips isn't as difficult...