PC-Based Open Architecture Standards: An Overview

Hardware and software enabling technologies are now firmly in place for the migration to economical PC-based digital video solutions in many areas of the professional video industry. The move from “black boxes” to PC-based open systems is well underway. It began in the late 80's with nonlinear editing systems, and now PCs are becoming ubiquitous in all segments of the video industry from content creation, through post-production, to broadcast delivery. — There are many benefits inherent in using PC-based technologies in video system designs. The widespread use of PCs in other applications makes them cost-effective. They offer significantly smaller system size and power requirements than traditional ‘dedicated-box’ architectures. In addition, intelligent control over the entire video application is provided by the computer. Perhaps the greatest PC benefit is modularity and multi-vendor interoperability of hardware and software through open standards. — This paper provides an overview of some of the important enabling technologies for PC-based open architecture in professional video applications including PCI-bus, Movie-2-bus, Advanced ASIC technology and IEEE 1394 on the hardware front; and Windows NT, ActiveMovie and OpenDML software extensions on the software side. It directs the reader to sites on the World Wide Web where further information on these topics can be obtained.

Published

1996-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00122

ISBN

978-1-61482-925-6