TANDBERG Codian ClearVision

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The visual media market is demanding an increased video resolution experience. This is driving the video conferencing and recording industry to develop new high definition (HD) equipment. However, a fork lift upgrade to an all-HD endpoint environment can be a considerable investment. To overcome this barrier Codian® has developed TANDBERG Codian ClearVision, an innovative resolution and vision enhancement technology. This eases an organization's transition to HD by removing the need for them to upgrade all their standard-definition (SD) and enhanced-definition (ED) endpoints.

What ClearVision Delivers

ClearVision is Codian's latest innovative technology, available on the TANDBERG Codian MCU 4500 Series that allows video media to be enhanced by up to 4 times its initial resolution.

The table below shows the resolution enhancements obtainable when using ClearVision.

Incoming Resolution	Enhanced Outgoing Resolution
QCIF	CIF
CIF	4CIF
448p	672p
480p	720p

Why Higher Resolution is Important

There are a number of benefits of higher resolutions. For example:

In typical larger conference rooms, definitions higher than SD and ED allow the conference participants to be more easily identified and their expressions read, ensuring a better quality of communication.
Continuous presence (often called Hollywood Squares) allows multiple sites to be viewed simultaneously. In this format the resolution should be as high as possible to allow every participant to be seen clearly.

Using ClearVision, these benefits are now available to organizations using SD and ED endpoints along with their HD endpoints.

Easing the Transition to HD

ClearVision overcomes the major challenge of transitioning the video conferencing industry to HD. This challenge is that, for the foreseeable future, the vast majority of video conferencing equipment in the field will be legacy SD or ED equipment, which is only capable of transmitting resolutions of CIF (352x288) or 448p/ED (576 x 448). This means that many HD video conferencing endpoints will be forced to view low resolution video, when in point-to-point or multipoint calls as the source of the video, the camera, the codec, or even the bandwidth of the remote site are not HD-capable.

However, ClearVision will allow HD endpoints to view SD and ED video media at up to 4 times their resolution.

The Advantages of ClearVision

ClearVision gives organizations the following specific advantages:

Legacy SD and ED endpoints can now be used to much greater effect in mixed SD/ED/HD environments. SD/ED endpoints can be viewed at up to 4x their resolutions on HD endpoints.
Lower resolution 3G-based video conference participants can be enhanced, increasing the opportunity for mobile workers to participate more effectively in video conference calls.
Some common endpoints in use today transmit CIF but are capable of receiving 4CIF. These can now fully utilize their 4CIF receive capability, when communicating with CIF endpoints.

Codian has made ClearVision available on its MCU 4500 Series of bridges in the version 2.1 software release.

The Codian Solution

Traditional logic states that processing an image must inherently reduce its quality, as there is no additional information available. However, in the case of video, we do have additional information in the form of previous video frames from that site.

The TANDBERG Codian MCU 4500 Series of conferencing bridges, has enough processing power to fully transcode an HD stream using H.264 at up to 60 frames per second (fps) on every port. As the processing power of a port is not fully utilized when it is being used to process SD or ED video, the excess processing power can be used to enhance the SD/ED picture.

TANDBERG Codian ClearVision

With the MCU 4500 Series, Codian now introduces its ground breaking ClearVision technology. Given the extremely large amounts of video processing power available with the MCU 4500 Series, Codian is able to apply its advanced technology in ways never used before in the video conferencing industry, in order to vastly improve video quality that SD and ED endpoints can contribute to video conferences.

TANDBERG Codian ClearVision contains a number of technologies including the capability to increase the resolution of SD and ED endpoints, Codian Super Resolution Enhancement, and also to remove unsightly video artifacts, Codian Artifact Removal:

Codian Super Resolution Enhancement

With Codian Super Resolution Enhancement, Codian is able to generate higher resolution images from SD and ED sources, greatly improving the clarity and detail of SD and ED sources in a call. This is carried out automatically and on-the-fly, using resource intensive algorithms that enhance the high-frequency visual components, with information gained by analyzing some number of previous video frames as well as the current frame. In essence, lost, high-frequency, visual elements are replaced with statistically probable alternatives. Codian Super Resolution Enhancement is able to produce enhancements of up to 4 times the source resolutions and ED resolutions can be enhanced to 'near' HD quality.

Codian Artifact Removal

With Codian Artifact Removal technology, Codian provides computationally advanced filters to remove visual artifacts, left by poor endpoints or low bandwidth encoders (such as 3G devices) in order to provide improved images. In conjunction with Codian Super Resolution Enhancement, low quality and bandwidth restricted devices will now be able to contribute far better quality video into multipoint calls.

Codian Universal Port Technology

As with all Codian products, the MCU 4500 Series uses Codian's Universal Port technology that allows each port to be encoded and decoded independently. This ensures that all endpoints connected to a call will receive the best quality they are capable of receiving - whether it is HD, ED or SD.

The TANDBERG Codian MCU 4500 Series is the only multipoint product available that allows HD endpoints in a multipoint call to receive HD resolution while SD and ED endpoints are in the same call.

The TANDBERG Codian MCU 4500 Series is able to transmit HD resolution to HD endpoints by combining the low resolutions into one high resolution image.

Now with ClearVision the TANDBERG Codian MCU 4500 Series is able to transmit vastly enhanced SD or ED video to HD endpoints.

Our factory-trained sales and technical staff install and support Codian projects across the country and around the world. As with the other video conferencing products we represent, IVCi provides clients with one point of contact for sales, service, management and support of the entire Codian product line.

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