Technology Sharpens Low Res Video

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September 05, 2006 (3:49 PM EDT)

Technology Sharpens Low Res Video

By Laurie Sullivan , TechWeb Technology News

Silicon Valley startup MotionDSP Inc. has licensed technology from the University of California at Santa Cruz that improves video image quality from phone cameras, webcams and other low-quality feeds, with plans to build and market a suite of commercial applications.
The technology, computational super resolution, relies on algorithms to capture objects in multiple frames within a video and replaces lost pixels, and reconstructs the original picture in a higher-resolution without increasing the file size, MotionDSP CEO Sean Varah said Tuesday.
UCSC associate professor Peyman Milanfar developed the technology funded by the military for possible surveillance video. MotionDSP plans to commercialize the technology for a variety of businesses, from user-generated video sites to cellular handset and television manufacturers.
Three undisclosed user-generated video sites are testing the technology, and plans are in the works to begin shipping server appliances for Internet video sites and carriers in 2007, Varah said. "Companies like Veoh, Metacafe and YouTube would take our software, which would come preloaded on a server appliance, and integrate it into their data center," he said. "A lot of the video that appears on YouTube is generated by cell-phone cameras."
Varah said the software automatically processes frames that people upload from their mobile phone to user-generated content sites to improve the quality before the video posts to the Web.
Karl Zhao believes MotionDSP has "solved a very tough problem that many companies have attempted without success." Supporting cellular phone handset manufacturers with video applications, DigiLink Systems Inc.'s COO said "this is a technology we would consider collaborating on with them."
Some experts believe in time still- and video-image capture will move to one device, along with computer, PDA, phone and more. The technology appeals to the venture capitalist community, given the huge explosion of user-generated video sites and the capability to take a 20- to 30- second video clip on a cellular phone and upload it to content sites, such as YouTube Inc. or News Corp.'s MySpace.com.
Many of the videos uploaded to user-generated video sites like 19-month-old YouTube, which serves up about 100 million videos daily, are created with the camera on a cellular phone.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based August Capital general partner David Hornik said cellular phones "suffer from lousy lenses, lousy sensors, and not enough storage and memory to do good signal processing around still and video images, so any type of technology to increase the clarity and stability of those images is interesting."
Hornik said the opportunity to offer this type of application as a service exists, but manufacturers also are working on high-definition video chips with low-power consumption and low-storage requirements aimed at embedding in a variety of devices.
MotionDSP's technology also caught the attention of Ray Schuder, senior associate at El Dorado Ventures, whose firm invests heavy in digital media, broadband video and IPTV, and finds MotionDSP's technology attractive.
Schuder won't confirm if El Dorado Ventures plans to feed funds into MotionDSP, but did say the two companies have worked together for nine months, introducing company entrepreneurs to executives at Adobe Systems Inc., Google Inc., and NVIDIA Corp. who can help determine the product's commercial viability.
MotionDSP's technology isn't limited to cameras. Application also are being developed that would enable viewers to watch 480i (interlaced) standard definition resolution video in high-definition resolution between 720p (progressive scanning) to 1080i on a high-definition television (HDTV) if the TV didn't have an HD receiver.