BEIJING, April 14 /Xinhua-PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Vimicro International Corporation (NASDAQ:VIMC) , a leading fabless semiconductor company that designs advanced mixed-signal multimedia products and solutions, today announced the launch of VC0706, a digital video processing SoC (System on Chip) for surveillance cameras. In addition, Vimicro announced its new ePTZ (Electronic Pan/Tilt/Zoom) surveillance camera reference design featuring a 5- megapixel CMOS image sensor from Aptina Imaging, a division of Micron Technology. Capitalizing on its rich experience in video processing and IC design, Vimicro developed VC0706 and ePTZ solution to meet the design needs of the fast-growing surveillance camera market.
Vimicro's VC0706 surveillance camera SoC is designed to provide powerful video capturing and processing functions and enable system designers to develop rich surveillance applications. Many surveillance cameras in the current market require a mechanical motor for pan/tilt/zoom function. With Vimicro's VC0706 SoC, Aptina's 5-megapixel image sensor(product number MT9P031) and a wide angle lens, ''motorless'' pan/tilt/zoom functions can be quickly added to the camera design, thus minimizing camera size and power consumption, and totally eliminating a mechanical maintenance requirement.
''VC0706 is our latest generation of surveillance camera SoC, building on the success of VC0702 and VC0703 that have been widely adopted in the surveillance market. Together with Aptina Imaging, we developed the VC0706 based ePTZ solution to satisfy customers' need for lower power consumption, smaller size and easy maintenance of surveillance cameras,'' said Dr. Mike Yu, Vice President and General Manager of Vimicro's Advanced Multimedia Product Unit. ''The ePTZ solution will enable our customers to design innovative surveillance cameras with richer features and increasingly robust systems.''
''We are excited about the collaborative effort with Vimicro to enable best-in-class ePTZ solutions," said Curtis Stith, Director of New Market at Aptina. ''The solution is a direct result of the technology created by combining Aptina's sensor expertise and Vimicro's advanced digital image processing technology. Vimicro's VC0706 and its ePTZ solution, featuring Aptina's MT9P031, 5-megapixel HD image sensor, are well positioned to deliver the video technology necessary for capturing details and providing the broad spatial coverage required by the surveillance industry.''
About VC0706
Vimicro's VC0706 surveillance camera SoC (System on Chip) is designed to provide powerful video capturing and processing functions such as Auto White Balance (AWB), Auto Exposure (AE), and temporal noise reduction that automatically enhances video under low-light environment. VC0706 also integrates a JPEG codec and a motion detection engine that enable camera designers to optimize video transferring and storage.
VC0706 can deliver high quality digital video output to an external host via standard CCIR 656 interface or to a TV display via embedded TV encoder and DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter). VC0706 also comes with embedded OSD (On Screen Display) function, allowing users to overlay information such as date, logo and text to the video without need for extra OSD ICs.
VC0706 can be configured by external host through high speed UART or SPI interface.
About MT9P031 Image Sensor
The MT9P031 showcases Micron's groundbreaking DigitalClarity technology, which enables brilliant, high-resolution color images that rival CCD-level image quality (based on signal-to-noise ratio and low-light sensitivity) without CCD-level power consumption. The MT9P031 superbly captures single frames as well as continuous video at up to 15 frames per second in full resolution or up to 60 frame per second at 720P HD resolution.
About VC0706 ePTZ solution
The Vimicro ePTZ solution is based on Vimicro's surveillance camera SoC VC0706 and the 5 mega pixel CMOS image sensor MT9P031 from Aptina Imaging to enable motorless Pan/Tilt/Zoom functionalities.
Vimicro's ePTZ solution can support up to 256X digital zoom and address any portion within the full view window. The ePTZ can be controlled through a keypad or a standard PTZ control protocol. The ePTZ solution supports embedded OSD image overlay function with logo, text, and date. With the OSD function enabled, the ePTZ solution further delivers a ''private zone'' feature. A portion of the view window can be designated and mosaic-ed as private zone, which automatically adjusts itself during PTZ.
About Vimicro
Vimicro International Corporation is a leading fabless semiconductor company in China designing, developing and marketing proprietary digital multimedia signal processing chips and solutions enabling multimedia applications for mobile phones over 2.5G/3G networks and PCs over broadband Internet. More info: www.vimicro.com/english
