Samsung is boasting a low-power H.264 camcorder system chip. It is used in the firm's 720x480 pixel 34x optical zoom MX-20 camcorder, released this month.

"The platform is the first to apply a H.264 codec to SD card camcorders," said the firm. "Supporting multi-codec from MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 to H.264, it improves recording times and video quality by more than doubling the compression ratio."

The newly developed chip includes functions formerly spread across a chip set.

"Manufactured using 65nm process technology on an ARM11 core, the platform integrates seven sub-chips including the LCD controller and video encoder," said Samsung. "Power consumption level has been lowered from 1.1W to 0.4W so that Samsung camcorders have almost twice the battery life."

Included is face detection, a 3-D noise reduction algorithm, an edge filter and colour control.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Samsung Electronics, a roundup of content on three main areas of the technology giant's development: memory chips, LCD displays and mobile phone technology.