Low-power video encoder/decoder chip set for digital VCRs

This paper describes the realization of a video encoder/decoder chip set for the consumer use digital video cassette recorder (VCR). The two chips with a 5 Mb external DRAM either encode the CCIR601 digital component video signal into the standard-definition digital VCR (DV) format or decode the DV format signal into a component video signal. The compression rate of the intraframe compression is about 1/6. The total power dissipation of the two LSI´s is 142 mW at 2 V internal supply voltage, which is more than one order of magnitude smaller than the recently reported MPIEG2 (MP@ML) encoder systems. Low power was achieved primarily due to the compression scheme which is optimized for large-scale integration (LSI) implementation. The 0.5-μm 2-V CMOS standard cell library was also effective in reducing the power consumption. Each chip, fabricated in two-layer metal 0.5-μm CMOS technology, contains about 500 k transistors on 71 mm² and 79 mm² die, respectively