Scalado, a leading developer of mobile imaging software, has today announced the launch of Scalado SpeedView, the most recent addition to its CAPS Software Development Kit (SDK) for camera phones. By using SpeedView, developers can now create jaw-dropping applications that will allow end-users to browse, zoom, and pan across high-resolution images instantly on a mobile handset.
Scalado’s unique SpeedView software will make it possible for mobile users to browse through hundreds of images in a photo gallery, either as high-resolution images or thumbnails, at lightning speed. One of the most commonly used functions within a camera phone is opening the photo gallery application, where users browse thumbnails, open an image and then browse screen size images zooming and panning over them. This process on any of today’s standard camera phones can take minutes. But, with Scalado’s SpeedView this process is virtually instant offering an incredibly fast and enjoyable user experience, with no waiting times.
“SpeedView has been specifically designed to bring the ultimate digital photography user experience onto a mobile device,” says Mats Jacobson, CEO, Scalado. “With SpeedView, software developers can create a high speed photo viewing application very quickly, and for a fraction of the cost normally associated with this kind of development.”
SpeedView has been launched as an optional feature module for Scalado’s CAPS SDK, a unique software imaging toolkit that enables developers to quickly produce imaging solutions for camera phones that offer extraordinary CPU and memory efficiency, thereby drastically decreasing processing times when managing high-resolution images.
Scalado’s SpeedView will enable real-time viewing of multi-megapixel images, as well as rapid scaling, zooming, and panning, without the need to compromise on image quality. The software includes APIs for smooth and extremely fast rendering of any zoom level, and also features caching mechanisms that can create an instant zoom effect in any constrained platform.
The secret behind SpeedView’s image processing power is Scalado’s patented RAJPEG(tm) technology. RAJPEG is Scalado’s own JPEG codec that reduces memory requirements, processing JPEG input and output images in the compressed domain, which enable the viewing of any region of a JPEG image without the need to access the previous parts of the image. SpeedView also uses SpeedView Meta Objects (SPMO) that include additional information of a particular image in order to speed up the decoding process even further. By giving RAJPEG this extra metadata, it can skip steps that would otherwise need to be completed for processing.
SpeedView provides a good example of how Scalado’s CAPS SDK can help developers to quickly produce imaging solutions that allow end-users to capture, edit, browse and manipulate high-resolution images at rapid speed. By using the CAPS SDK in this way, manufacturers can significantly reduce unit costs and time to market, whilst end-users experience faster processing times when performing imaging tasks. This improved user experience will encourage users to capture and share more images, therefore increasing MMS traffic and operator revenues.
A SpeedView Beta-version has been available for evaluation by selected customers during Q4 2006, and the first commercial SpeedView enabled camera phones will be on the market from mid 2007.
Scalado says it will “show you the difference” at 3GSM.