Mike's Sketchpad Newsroom

BATH, UK – British researchers have solved the problem of video scaling by developing a new video codec that uses vectors instead of pixels for continuous tone images.

Conventional digital video is represented by a grid of pixels, which are not scalable and have to be rendered to a fixed size, thus limiting the distribution of digital video films to the formats for which they have been prepared. For example, standard TV is rendered at 768×576, HD TV at 1920×1024 and Internet and mobile phone video at anywhere from 384×256 on up.

Researchers first developed a vectorizing codec for photographic images and authors John Patterson, Christine Taylor and Philip Willis published their work in a paper entitled Reconstructing Vectorised Photographic Images (2009).  The result was the VPI format (Vectorized Photographic Images) and the research paper shows some pretyy impressive results.

Building on this earlier work Philip Willis and John Patterson of the University of Bath in England developed a vector video codec that they predict will replace the current pixel video format within five years.

In an article by Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech.com entitled “Vector vengeance: British researchers claim they can kill the pixel within five years”  the author reports on the discovery and provides some explanation on how it works.