Real-time software MPEG-2 video encoder on parallel and distributed computer systems

This paper proposes a real-time software MPEG-2 video encoder on parallel and distributed computer systems and evaluates its performance and usefulness. This parallel software encoder consists of a small number of high-speed encoding elements and a frame-synchronization controller with I/O. Each encoding element is accelerated and optimized by using new fast algorithms. The activity of all encoding elements is globally maintained at each frame interval by the controller with sophisticated parallel rate control and dynamic load balancing algorithms based on previous encoded parameters and CPU workloads. This parallel software is implemented on a parallel and distributed computer systems using Message Passing Interface (MPI), which is a simple but powerful parallel communication library. The parallel software MPEG-2 video encoder attains scalability in the number of exploiting CPUs and provides sufficient performance for realtime full NTSC-size encoding (720 pixels by 480 pixels) on a workstation with four 300-MHz CPUs. This approach promises to be an important step towards a complete software encoding for future microprocessors.