V-Nova acquires video processing patents
February 6, 2017
In a move it says will expand and strengthen the breadth of existing patent portfolio and further improve the performance of its PERSEUS-based solutions, video compression solutions provider V-Nova, has completed its first acquisition, by purchasing the full global patent portfolio of video imaging specialist Faroudja Enterprises for an undisclosed sum.
Faroudja Enterprises was founded by video pioneer and multiple Emmy Award winner Yves Faroudja, and the acquisition of its patent portfolio is a strong investment by V-Nova in its own long-term technology roadmap. V-Nova says the addition of the Faroudja technology will ensure that it continues to be at the forefront of next-generation video services.
“These are exciting times for V-Nova and our customers, as we continue to expand our capabilities and grow internationally,” declared Guido Meardi, V-Nova CEO & Co-Founder. “New, disruptive technologies such as Ultra-HD TV, 360 video, VR immersive video and high quality video transmission on any network can all significantly benefit from solutions that reduce the bandwidth requirements in a cost-effective and scalable way. By acquiring the highly complementary patents of Faroudja Enterprises’ ground-breaking solutions, we are enhancing our ability to achieve this even further. Faroudja’s technology has already been demonstrated to provide a bitrate reduction of 35-50 per cent over an existing compression technique. A tighter integration with V-Nova’s PERSEUS will leverage the codec’s own bitrate reduction performance to provide even greater benefits.”
The acquired patent portfolio consists of the Faroudja pre-processor (for use prior to compression) and post-processor (after compression decoding). The system also includes techniques for video enhancement such as multidimensional video processing as well as the use of a unique support layer in parallel with the conventional compression path. The Faroudja scheme complements compression standards such as MPEG-2, h.264, HEVC and – of course – PERSEUS.
According to Michelle Abraham, Senior Research Analyst with Media & Communications at S&P Global Market Intelligence, encoding in the cloud is increasingly important to compression companies and we can see evidence of this already through the growing prominence of software encoding. “Portfolio acquisitions such as the one between V-Nova and Faroudja Enterprises demonstrate the importance of continuing to advance video compression technology to ensure high quality video can be transmitted across all types of networks,” she advised.
The Faroudja patent portfolio strengthens V-Nova’s existing software solutions, without requiring modifications to the standard codec. V-Nova is therefore able fully to leverage the value of Faroudja Enterprises’ patents within V-Nova PERSEUS, consolidating the unique competitive advantage of the platform as the only hierarchical and fully parallel coding format on the market.
“Our patent portfolio has been developed through years of experience in award-winning image processing and video compression,” explained Yves Faroudja, President of Faroudja Enterprises. “We are pleased that our innovation and hard work in developing industry-leading patents will now contribute to V-Nova’s wider global strategy to enable operators and service providers to connect more people with high quality content, even when challenged by bandwidth constraints.”