Real-Time Video Filtering and Overlay Character Generation on FPGA

Real-time video processing is a rapidly evolving field with growing applications in science and engineering. Portable video processing systems require design which reduces the power, memory usage, and resource utilization while maintaining real-time operation. General system architecture for real-time video filtering and overlay character generation, based on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is presented and evaluated. After initial configuration over the parallel port connection, the video codec dumps a stream of pixels in ITU-R BT.656 format, 8-bits per component with sync signals, using a sampling clock of 27 MHz. This stream is then fed to a series of filters, format conversion and overlay character generator. Finally, the Video Graphics Array (VGA) generator receives the pixel stream and displays it on a monitor. The implemented design includes filters of different functions and character generator with keyboard interface. The real-time of application like stock ticker and time display are also demonstrated. The VHDL codes for the architecture were synthesized using Xilinx ISE 10.1 and targeted for Xilinx Spartan3E FPGA. The results show that this design gives good performance with short processing time, low resource utilization, small power consumption and memory usage.