Vela Research announced the first entrant in its ArgoNavis Universal family of multi-format, multiscreen video encoders, decoders and professional video equipment. The ArgoNavis Universal Encoder is designed to encode in SD and HD, in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 H.264 formats. The system comes in a 1.5 RU form, and encodes across a range of resolutions, bitrates, formats and ancillary data specifications.It's designed to support HD MPEG-4 H.264 and MPEG-2 encoding in real time at 1920x1080i and 1280x720p resolutions at both NTSC and PAL frame rates, and 1920x1080p encoding at the Cinema/BluRay frame rate. Input/output options include analog (composite, component, audio) and HDMI only, or HS/SD SDI only, or analog, HD/SD SDI and HDMI options. It supports 608/708 CC capture from VANC or Line 21 CC from analog VBI. It also has an optional SDI & VANC Monitoring module and Closed Captioning Verification functionality.