An efficient and adaptable multimedia system for converting PAL to VGA in real-time video processing

Real-time video processing has found its range of applications from defense to consumer electronics for surveillance, video conferencing, etc. With the advent of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), flexible real-time video processing systems which can meet hard real-time constraints are easily realized with short development time. Most of the existing solutions have high utilization of system resources and are not quite flexible with many applications. Here we propose a hardware-software co-design for an FPGA-based real-time video processing system to convert video in standard Phase Alternating Line (PAL) 576i format to standard video of Video Graphics Array (VGA)/Super Video Graphics Array (SVGA) format with little utilization of resources. Switching between multiple video streams, character/text overlaying, and skin color detection are also incorporated with the system. The system is also adaptable for rugged applications. VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) codes for the architecture were synthesized using Altera Quartus II and targeted for Altera Stratix I FPGA. Results achieved confirm that the proposed system performs efficient conversion with very less resource utilization compared to the existing solutions. Since the proposed system is also flexible, many other applications can be incorporated in the future.