Jump to content

Advanced Video Coding

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Erpel13 (talk | contribs) at 18:28, 23 January 2007 (→‎External links). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC (for Advanced Video Coding), is a digital video codec standard that is noted for achieving very high data compression. It was written by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the product of a collective partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10 standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10) are technically identical. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003.

H.264 is a name related to the ITU-T line of H.26x video standards, while AVC relates to the ISO/IEC MPEG side of the partnership project that completed the work on the standard, after earlier development done in the ITU-T as a project called H.26L. It is usual to call the standard as H.264/AVC (or AVC/H.264 or H.264/MPEG-4 AVC or MPEG-4/H.264 AVC) to emphasize the common heritage. The name H.26L, harkening back to its ITU-T history, is far less common, but still used. Occasionally, it has also been referred to as "the JVT codec", in reference to the JVT organization that developed it. (Such partnership and multiple naming is not unprecedented, as the video codec standard known as MPEG-2 also arose from a partnership between MPEG and the ITU-T, and MPEG-2 video is also known in the ITU-T community as H.262.)

The intent of the H.264/AVC project was to create a standard that would be capable of providing good video quality at bit rates that are substantially lower (e.g., half or less) than what previous standards would need (e.g., relative to MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2), and to do so without so much of an increase in complexity as to make the design impractical (excessively expensive) to implement. An additional goal was to do this in a flexible way that would allow the standard to be applied to a very wide variety of applications (e.g., for both low and high bit rates, and low and high resolution video) and to work well on a very wide variety of networks and systems (e.g., for broadcast, DVD storage, RTP/IP packet networks, and ITU-T multimedia telephony systems).

The JVT recently completed the development of some extensions to the original standard that are known as the Fidelity Range Extensions (FRExt). These extensions support higher-fidelity video coding by supporting increased sample accuracy (including 10-bit and 12-bit coding) and higher-resolution color information (including sampling structures known as YUV 4:2:2 and YUV 4:4:4). Several other features are also included in the Fidelity Range Extensions project (such as adaptive switching between 4×4 and 8×8 integer transforms, encoder-specified perceptual-based quantization weighting matrices, efficient inter-picture lossless coding, support of additional color spaces, and a residual color transform). The design work on the Fidelity Range Extensions was completed in July of 2004, and the drafting was finished in September of 2004.

Features

H.264/AVC/MPEG-4 Part 10 contains a number of new features that allow it to compress video much more effectively than older standards and to provide more flexibility for application to a wide variety of network environments. In particular, some such key features include:

  • Multi-picture inter-picture prediction including the following features:
    • Using previously-encoded pictures as references in a much more flexible way than in past standards, allowing up to 32 reference pictures to be used in some cases (unlike in prior standards, where the limit was typically one or, in the case of conventional "B pictures", two). This particular feature usually allows modest improvements in bit rate and quality in most scenes. But in certain types of scenes, for example scenes with rapid repetitive flashing or back-and-forth scene cuts or uncovered background areas, it allows a very significant reduction in bit rate.
    • Variable block-size motion compensation (VBSMC) with block sizes as large as 16×16 and as small as 4×4, enabling very precise segmentation of moving regions.
    • Six-tap filtering for derivation of half-pel luma sample predictions, in order to lessen the aliasing and eventually provide sharper images.
    • Quarter-pixel precision for motion compensation, enabling very precise description of the displacements of moving areas. For chroma the resolution is typically halved both vertically and horizontally (see 4:2:0) therefore the motion compensation precision is down to one-eighth pixel.
    • Weighted prediction, allowing an encoder to specify the use of a scaling and offset when performing motion compensation, and providing a significant benefit in performance in special cases—such as fade-to-black, fade-in, and cross-fade transitions.
  • Spatial prediction from the edges of neighboring blocks for "intra" coding (rather than the "DC"-only prediction found in MPEG-2 Part 2 and the transform coefficient prediction found in H.263+ and MPEG-4 Part 2).
  • Lossless macroblock coding features including:
    • A lossless PCM macroblock representation mode in which video data samples are represented directly, allowing perfect representation of specific regions and allowing a strict limit to be placed on the quantity of coded data for each macroblock.
    • An enhanced lossless macroblock representation mode allowing perfect representation of specific regions while ordinarily using substantially fewer bits than the PCM mode (not supported in all profiles).
  • A macroblock pair structure (not supported in all profiles), allowing 16x16 macroblocks in field mode (vs. 16x8 half-macroblocks in MPEG-2) for effective handling of interlaced video.
  • New transform design features, including:
    • An exact-match integer 4×4 spatial block transform (conceptually similar to the well-known DCT design, but simplified and made to provide exactly-specified decoding), allowing precise placement of residual signals with little of the "ringing" often found with prior codec designs.
    • An exact-match integer 8×8 spatial block transform (conceptually similar to the well-known DCT design, but simplified and made to provide exactly-specified decoding, not supported in all profiles), allowing highly correlated regions to be compressed more efficiently than with the 4×4 transform.
    • Adaptive encoder selection between the 4×4 and 8×8 transform block sizes for the integer transform operation (not supported in all profiles).
    • A secondary Hadamard transform performed on "DC" coefficients of the primary spatial transform (for chroma DC coefficients and also luma in one special case) to obtain even more compression in smooth regions.
  • A quantization design including:
    • Logarithmic step size control for easier bit rate management by encoders and simplified inverse-quantization scaling.
    • Frequency-customized quantization scaling matrices selected by the encoder for perceptual-based quantization optimization (not supported in all profiles).
  • An in-loop deblocking filter which helps prevent the blocking artifacts common to other DCT-based image compression techniques.
  • An entropy coding design including:
    • Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC), which is a clever technique to losslessly compress syntax elements in the video stream knowing the probabilities of syntax elements in a given context (not supported in all profiles).
    • Context-adaptive variable-length coding (CAVLC), which is a lower-complexity alternative to CABAC for the coding of quantized transform coefficient values. Although lower complexity than CABAC, CAVLC is more elaborate and more efficient than the methods typically used to code coefficients in other prior designs.
    • A common simple and highly structured variable length coding (VLC) technique for many of the syntax elements not coded by CABAC or CAVLC, referred to as Exponential-Golomb coding (or just Exp-Golomb).
  • Loss resilience features including:
    • A network abstraction layer (NAL) definition allowing the same video syntax to be used in many network environments, including features such as sequence parameter sets (SPSs) and picture parameter sets (PPSs) that provide more robustness and flexibility than provided in prior designs.
    • Flexible macroblock ordering (FMO, also known as slice groups and not supported in all profiles) and arbitrary slice ordering (ASO), which are techniques for restructuring the ordering of the representation of the fundamental regions (called macroblocks) in pictures. Typically considered an error/loss robustness feature, FMO and ASO can also be used for other purposes.
    • Data partitioning (DP), a feature providing the ability to separate more important and less important syntax elements into different packets of data, enabling the application of unequal error protection (UEP) and other types of improvement of error/loss robustness (not supported in all profiles).
    • Redundant slices (RS), an error/loss robustness feature allowing an encoder to send an extra representation of a picture region (typically at lower fidelity) that can be used if the primary representation is corrupted or lost (not supported in all profiles).
    • Frame numbering, a feature that allows the creation of "sub-sequences" (enabling temporal scalability by optional inclusion of extra pictures between other pictures), and the detection and concealment of losses of entire pictures (which can occur due to network packet losses or channel errors).
  • Switching slices (called SP and SI slices and not supported in all profiles), features that allow an encoder to direct a decoder to jump into an ongoing video stream for such purposes as video streaming bit rate switching and "trick mode" operation. When a decoder jumps into the middle of a video stream using the SP/SI feature, it can get an exact match to the decoded pictures at that location in the video stream despite using different pictures (or no pictures at all) as references prior to the switch.
  • A simple automatic process for preventing the accidental emulation of start codes, which are special sequences of bits in the coded data that allow random access into the bitstream and recovery of byte alignment in systems that can lose byte synchronization.
  • Supplemental enhancement information (SEI) and video usability information (VUI), which are extra information that can be inserted into the bitstream to enhance the use of the video for a wide variety of purposes.
  • Auxiliary pictures, which can be used for such purposes as alpha compositing.
  • Picture order count, a feature that serves to keep the ordering of the pictures and the values of samples in the decoded pictures isolated from timing information (allowing timing information to be carried and controlled/changed separately by a system without affecting decoded picture content).

These techniques, along with several others, help H.264 to perform significantly better than any prior standard can, under a wide variety of circumstances in a wide variety of application environments. H.264 can often perform radically better than MPEG-2 video—typically obtaining the same quality at half of the bit rate or less.

Like other ISO/IEC MPEG video standards, H.264/AVC has a reference software implementation that can be freely downloaded. Its main purpose is to give examples of H.264/AVC features, rather than being a useful application per se. (See the links section for a pointer to that software.) Some reference hardware design work is also under way in MPEG.

Profiles

The standard includes the following six sets of capabilities, which are referred to as profiles, targeting specific classes of applications:

  • Baseline Profile (BP): Primarily for lower-cost applications with limited computing resources, this profile is used widely in videoconferencing and mobile applications.
  • Main Profile (MP): Originally intended as the mainstream consumer profile for broadcast and storage applications, the importance of this profile faded when the High profile was developed for those applications.
  • Extended Profile (XP): Intended as the streaming video profile, this profile has relatively high compression capability and some extra tricks for robustness to data losses and server stream switching.
  • High Profile (HiP): The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for high-definition television applications (this is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, for example).
  • High 10 Profile (Hi10P): Going beyond today's mainstream consumer product capabilities, this profile builds on top of the High Profile — adding support for up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
  • High 4:2:2 Profile (Hi422P): Primarily targeting professional applications that use interlaced video, this profile builds on top of the High 10 Profile — adding support for the 4:2:2 chroma sampling format while using up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.

The following previously-defined profile has been removed from the standard due to an interest in creating an improved replacement prior to industry deployment:

  • High 4:4:4 Profile (Hi444P) [deprecated]: This profile builds on top of the High 4:2:2 Profile — supporting up to 4:4:4 chroma sampling, up to 12 bits per sample, and additionally supporting efficient lossless region coding and an integer residual color transform for coding RGB video while avoiding color-space transformation error.
Baseline Extended Main High High 10 High 4:2:2 High 4:4:4

[deprecated]

I and P Slices Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
B Slices No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SI and SP Slices No Yes No No No No No
Multiple Reference Frames Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
In-Loop Deblocking Filter Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CAVLC Entropy Coding Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CABAC Entropy Coding No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) Yes Yes No No No No No
Arbitrary Slice Ordering (ASO) Yes Yes No No No No No
Redundant Slices (RS) Yes Yes No No No No No
Data Partitioning No Yes No No No No No
Interlaced Coding (PicAFF, MBAFF) No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
4:2:0 Chroma Format Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Monochrome Video Format (4:0:0) No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
4:2:2 Chroma Format No No No No No Yes Yes
4:4:4 Chroma Format No No No No No No Yes
8 Bit Sample Depth Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
9 and 10 Bit Sample Depth No No No No Yes Yes Yes
11 and 12 Bit Sample Depth No No No No No No Yes
8x8 vs. 4x4 Transform Adaptivity No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Quantization Scaling Matrices No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Separate Cb and Cr QP control No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Residual Color Transform No No No No No No Yes
Predictive Lossless Coding No No No No No No Yes
Baseline Extended Main High High 10 High 4:2:2 High 4:4:4

[deprecated]

Levels

Level number Max macroblocks per second Max frame size (macroblocks) Max video bit rate (VCL) for Baseline, Extended and Main Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 10 Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Profile Examples for high resolution @
frame rate
(max stored frames)
in Level
1 1485 99 64 kbit/s 80 kbit/s 192 kbit/s 256 kbit/s 128x96@30.9 (8)
176x144@15.0 (4)
1b 1485 99 128 kbit/s 160 kbit/s 384 kbit/s 512 kbit/s 128x96@30.9 (8)
176x144@15.0 (4)
1.1 3000 396 192 kbit/s 240 kbit/s 576 kbit/s 768 kbit/s 176x144@30.3 (9)
320x240@10.0 (3)
352x288@7.5 (2)
1.2 6000 396 384 kbit/s 480 kbit/s 1152 kbit/s 1536 kbit/s 320x240@20.0 (7)
352x288@15.2 (6)
1.3 11880 396 768 kbit/s 960 kbit/s 2304 kbit/s 3072 kbit/s 320x240@36.0 (7)
352x288@30.0 (6)
2 11880 396 2 Mbit/s 2.5 Mbit/s 6 Mbit/s 8 Mbit/s 320x240@36.0 (7)
352x288@30.0 (6)
2.1 19800 792 4 Mbit/s 5 Mbit/s 12 Mbit/s 16 Mbit/s 352x480@30.0 (7)
352x576@25.0 (6)
2.2 20250 1620 4 Mbit/s 5 Mbit/s 12 Mbit/s 16 Mbit/s 352x480@30.7(10)
352x576@25.6 (7)
720x480@15.0 (6)
720x576@12.5 (5)
3 40500 1620 10 Mbit/s 12.5 Mbit/s 30 Mbit/s 40 Mbit/s 352x480@61.4 (12)
352x576@51.1 (10)
720x480@30.0 (6)
720x576@25.0 (5)
3.1 108000 3600 14 Mbit/s 17.5 Mbit/s 42 Mbit/s 56 Mbit/s 720x480@80.0 (13)
720x576@66.7 (11)
1280x720@30.0 (5)
3.2 216000 5120 20 Mbit/s 25 Mbit/s 60 Mbit/s 80 Mbit/s 1280x720@60.0 (5)
1280x1024@42.2 (4)
4 245760 8192 20 Mbit/s 25 Mbit/s 60 Mbit/s 80 Mbit/s 1280x720@68.3 (9)
1920x1088@30.1 (4)
2048x1024@30.0 (4)
4.1 245760 8192 50 Mbit/s 62.5 Mbit/s 150 Mbit/s 200 Mbit/s 1280x720@68.3 (9)
1920x1088@30.1 (4)
2048x1024@30.0 (4)
4.2 522240 8704 50 Mbit/s 62.5 Mbit/s 150 Mbit/s 200 Mbit/s 1920x1088@64.0 (4)
2048x1088@60.0 (4)
5 589824 22080 135 Mbit/s 168.75 Mbit/s 405 Mbit/s 540 Mbit/s 1920x1088@72.3 (13)
2048x1024@72.0 (13)
2048x1088@67.8 (12)
2560x1920@30.7 (5)
3680x1536/26.7 (5)
5.1 983040 36864 240 Mbit/s 300 Mbit/s 720 Mbit/s 960 Mbit/s 1920x1088@120.5 (16)
4096x2048@30.0 (5)
4096x2304@26.7 (5)
Level number Max macroblocks per second Max frame size (macroblocks) Max video bit rate (VCL) for Baseline, Extended and Main Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 10 Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Profile Examples for high resolution @
frame rate
(max stored frames)
in Level

Standardization Committee and History

In early 1998 the Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG – ITU-T SG16 Q.6) issued a call for proposals on a project called H.26L, with the target to double the coding efficiency (which means halving the bit rate necessary for a given level of fidelity) in comparison to any other existing video coding standards for a broad variety of applications. VCEG was chaired by Gary Sullivan (Microsoft (formerly PictureTel), USA). The first draft design for that new standard was adopted in August 1999. In 2000, Thomas Wiegand (Heinrich Hertz Institute, Germany) became VCEG co-chair. In December of 2001, VCEG and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG – ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11) formed a Joint Video Team (JVT), with the charter to finalize the draft new video coding standard for formal approval submission as H.264/AVC in March 2003. The JVT was (is) chaired by Gary Sullivan, Thomas Wiegand, and Ajay Luthra (Motorola, USA). In June 2004, the Fidelity range extensions (FRExt) project was finalized. Since January 2005, the JVT has been working on an extension of H.264/AVC towards scalability by an Annex called Scalable Video Coding (SVC). The JVT management team was extended by Jens-Reiner Ohm (Aachen University, Germany). Since July 2006, the JVT works on an extension of H.264/AVC towards multi-view video coding (MVC).

Versions

Versions of the H.264/AVC standard include the following completed revisions (dates are final approval dates in ITU-T, while final "International Standard" approval dates in ISO/IEC are somewhat different and later in most cases):

  • First version containing Baseline, Extended, and Main profiles (May 2003).
  • Corrigendum containing various minor corrections (May 2004).
  • Second version containing Fidelity Range Extensions (FRExt) containing High, High 10, High 4:2:2, and High 4:4:4 profiles (March 2005).
  • Corrigendum containing various minor corrections and adding three aspect ratio indicators (September 2005).
  • Amendment containing various minor changes (June 2006):
    • Removal of prior High 4:4:4 profile (processed as a corrigendum in ISO/IEC).
    • Minor extension adding extended-gamut color space support (bundled with above-mentioned aspect ratio indicators in ISO/IEC).

Planned additions:

  • Addition of High 4:4:4 Predictive and three Intra-only profiles (not yet completed).
  • Scalable video coding (SVC — not yet completed).
  • Corrigendum containing various minor corrections (not yet completed).
  • Multi-view coding (MVC — not yet completed).

Patent licensing

As with MPEG-2 Parts 1 and 2 and MPEG-4 Part 2 amongst others, the vendors of H.264/AVC products and services are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology that their products use (where software patent regulations are upheld). The primary source of licenses for patents applying to this standard is a private organization known as MPEG LA (which is not affiliated in any way with the MPEG standardization organization, but which also administers patent pools for MPEG-2 Part 1 Systems, MPEG-2 Part 2 Video, MPEG-4 Part 2 Video, and other technologies).

Applications

H.264/AVC experienced widespread adoption within a few years of the completion of the standard. It is employed widely in applications ranging from television broadcast to video for mobile devices. In order to ensure compatibility and problem-free adoption of H.264/AVC, many standards bodies have amended or added to video standards so that users of these standards can employ H.264/AVC.

Both of the major candidate next-generation DVD rival formats planned for product deployment in 2006 include the H.264/AVC High Profile as a mandatory player feature — specifically:

  • The HD DVD format of the DVD Forum
  • The Blu-ray Disc format of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA)

The Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standards body in Europe approved the use of H.264/AVC for broadcast television in Europe in late 2004. The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards body in the United States is considering the possibility of specifying one or two advanced video codecs for its optional Enhanced-VSB (E-VSB) transmission mode for use in U.S. broadcast television. It has included H.264/AVC and VC-1 into Candidate Standards as CS/TSG-659r2[1] and CS/TSG-658r1[2] respectively for this purpose. The status of terrestrial broadcast adoption in some specific countries is as follows:

Direct broadcast satellite TV services will use the new standard, including:

USDTV announced plans to use H.264 for its pay-for-premium ATSC channels, which can only be decrypted by USDTV's set top boxes.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has approved the inclusion of H.264/AVC as an optional feature in release 6 of its mobile multimedia telephony services specifications.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB) of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) have adopted H.264/AVC as their preferred video codec for a broad variety of military applications.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has completed a payload packetization format (RFC 3984) for carrying H.264/AVC video using its Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP).

The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) has adopted H.264/AVC for its new ISMA 2.0 specifications.

Based on ITU-T H.32x standards, H.264/AVC is widely used for videoconferencing. Essentially all new videoconferencing products now support it.

The International Telecommunications Union-Radiocom. Sector (ITU-R) has adopted H.264/AVC in

  • ITU-R BT.1687 "Video bit-rate reduction for real-time distribution of large-screen digital imagery applications for presentation in a theatrical environment" and
  • ITU-R BT.1737 "Use of the ITU-T Recommendation H.264 (MPEG-4/AVC) video source-coding method to transport high definition TV programme material" for HDTV contribution, distribution, and satellite news gathering.

In October 2005, Apple began selling H.264-encoded videos over the Internet through their iTunes Music Store.[4] Initially selling just television series and music videos, they expanded in September 2006 to sell films.

Panasonic is planning to implement the AVC-Intra codec to introduce MPEG-4 AVC to the Broadcast community through it's P2HD products.

AVCHD is an implementation of H.264 by Sony and Panasonic.

Products and Implementations

Prominent software implementations

  • x264 is a GPL-licensed H.264 encoder that is used in the free VideoLAN and MEncoder transcoding applications and, as of December 2005, remains the only reasonably complete open source and free software implementation of the standard, with support for Main Profile and High Profile. [5] A Video for Windows was available in previous revisions of x264, but it has been discontinued. x264 won an independent video codec comparison organized by Doom9.org in December 2005.[6] Program-pack called Gordian Knot uses x264 to encode ripped DVD video material.
  • The LGPL-licensed libavcodec includes a H.264 decoder. It can decode Baseline Profile, Main Profile and High Profile video, except PAFF interlaced video. It is used in many programs like in the free VLC media player and MPlayer multimedia players, and in ffdshow and FFmpeg decoders projects.
  • CoreAVC by CoreCodec is a highly optimized commercial H.264 decoder. According to independent tests by people on the Doom9.org forums, it is the fastest software decoder as of June 2006. The standard version supports Baseline Profile, Main Profile and High profile, except interlaced video. The professional edition supports both PAFF and MBAFF interlaced video beginning from version 1.1. The professional edition also supports speedups on SMP capable systems.
  • Nero Digital, co-developed by Nero AG and Ateme, includes an H.264 encoder and decoder (as of September 2005, corresponding to Main Profile, except interlaced video support), along with other MPEG-4 compatible technologies. It was updated in 2006 to support High Profile.
  • Apple Computer has integrated H.264 into Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger), as well as QuickTime version 7. The encoder conforms to Main Profile. The decoder supports Baseline, Extended, and most of Main Profile [7]. QuickTime 7 is also now available for Microsoft's Windows operating system. Apple's iChat video conferencing software uses H.264, as does its latest version of DVD Studio Pro. DVD Studio Pro allows for the burning of HD-DVD content to both standard DVDs and HD-DVD media. Apple's Compressor can also encode in H.264 format.
  • BT Group offers a modular implementation of H.264. Written in C/C++, it has been ported to various platforms from PCs to mobile phones. All 4:2:0 profiles (Baseline/Main/Extended/High) are supported [8].
  • MainConcept H.264/AVC SDK offers encoding and decoding in all profiles and levels supported by the standard. MainConcept also offers a stand alone encoding app.

Software encoder feature comparison

Quicktime Nero Digital x264 Mainconcept Elecard Telestream
I and P Slices Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
B Slices Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SI and SP Slices No No No No No No
Multiple Reference Frames Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
In-Loop Deblocking Filter Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CAVLC Entropy Coding Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CABAC Entropy Coding No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) No No No No No No
Arbitrary Slice Ordering (ASO) No No No No No No
Redundant Slices (RS) No No No No No No
Data Partitioning No No No No No No
Film grain modelling No No No No No No
Interlaced Coding (PicAFF, MBAFF) No No Yes Yes Yes No
4:2:0 Chroma Format Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Monochrome Video Format (4:0:0) No No No No Yes No
4:2:2 Chroma Format No No No No No Yes
4:4:4 Chroma Format No No No No No No
8 Bit Sample Depth Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
9 and 10 Bit Sample Depth No No No No No No
11 and 12 Bit Sample Depth No No No No No No
8x8 vs. 4x4 Transform Adaptivity No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Quantization Scaling Matrices No No Yes No No No
Separate Cb and Cr QP control No No Yes Yes Yes No
Residual Color Transform No No No No No No
Predictive Lossless Coding No No Yes No Yes No
Quicktime Nero Digital x264 Mainconcept Elecard Telestream

Prominent hardware implementations

Decoding

Several companies are mass-producing custom chips capable of decoding H.264/AVC video. Chips capable of real-time decoding at HDTV picture resolutions include these:

Such chips will allow widespread deployment of low-cost devices capable of playing H.264/AVC video at standard-definition and high-definition television resolutions.

Many other hardware implementations are deployed in various markets, ranging from inexpensive consumer electronics to real-time FPGA-based encoders for broadcast. A few of the more familiar hardware product offerings for H.264/AVC include these:

  • Apple's 5.5th Generation iPod can play H.264 Baseline Profile up to Level 3 with support for bit rates up to 1.5 Mbit/s, image resolutions up to 640x480, and frame rates up to 30 frames per second. This device also plays MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640x480 pixels, 30 frames per sec. Additionally, video of up to 720x480 (NTSC DVD) encoded in the iPod compliant H.264 profile may be viewed on the device; if transferred with an iTunes alternative. Playback at full DVD resolution does not require any firmware modification to the iPod.
  • The Sony Playstation Portable features hardware decoding of H.264 video from UMD disks and Memory Stick Pro Duo flash cards. The device supports Main Profile up to Level 2.1 with bit rates up to 768 kbit/s. However, video files are still limited to resolutions up to 320x240.
  • The Microsoft Xbox 360 features a separate HD-DVD drive that plugs into the console via USB that can play back HD-DVD discs, which includes HD-DVD discs using the H.264 codec.
  • The Sony Playstation 3, which can work as a full-blown Blu-ray movie player, is able to play Blu-ray movies encoded with the standard H.264 codec.

Encoding

Fujitsu has announced a 1080i encoding/decoding IC that will be introduced in March 2007, priced at 120 USD. The chip will be produced in a 90 nm process and will support High Profile Level 4 (up to 25 Mbit/s)[10].

The DMS-02 media processor from 3DLabs promises to encode D1 video at 30 fps[11] (equivalent to High 4:2:2 Profile, Level 3).

Ambarella claims to be able to encode 1080i at below one watt of power consumption in their A1 SoC platform[12].

References

  1. ^ http://www.atsc.org/standards/cs_documents/CS-TSG-659r2.pdf
  2. ^ http://www.atsc.org/standards/cs_documents/CS-TSG-658r1.pdf
  3. ^ http://en.prosiebensat1.com/pressezentrum/prosiebensat1mediaag/2005/08/x00755/
  4. ^ Apple PR (October 12, 2005). "Apple Announces iTunes 6 With 2,000 Music Videos, Pixar Short Films & Hit TV Shows". Apple Computer. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
  5. ^ http://www.videolan.org/x264.html
  6. ^ http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-final-105-1.htm
  7. ^ http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=102609
  8. ^ http://www.ipvalue.com/technology/docs/BT_H264.pdf
  9. ^ http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html
  10. ^ http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2006/20061130-01.html
  11. ^ http://www.3dlabs.com/content/newsReleases/PR28NOV06A.asp
  12. ^ http://www.ambarella.com/news/press_releases/pr_12052005.htm

See also

GetOneByOne : Downloadable BOOKS & PAPERS on Media & H.264


Template:MediaCompression

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Advanced_Video_Coding&oldid=102713371"