H.264/AVC - Encode Technology V0.8.0

H.264/AVC standard was published by the JVT group, which was co-founded by ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG, in 2003. By adopting new technologies in the video compression field, H.264/AVC outperforms its predecessor, MPEG-2, with its high performance and moderate compression complexity level. Now, it has already taken the place of MPEG-2 and become the most popular compression standard in the world.

Rate-Distortion is typically used to judge the performance of compression algorithms. The Rate is the bit rate of the compressed video, with bps (bits per seconds) as its unit of measure. The Distortion measures the difference level between the compressed video and the original video. The Distortion is measured by Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), with dB as its unit.

There are two ways to compare two compression algorithms i.e. comparing PSNRs with fixed bit rate and comparing bit rates with fixed PSNR.

Moreover, Rate-Distortion is an objective indicator for compression performance under an ideal hypothesis. In the real world, before we can have the compressed video, the original video needs to go through a complicated procedure. There are many other factors which impact video quality and compression is only a part of it.

The H.264/AVC standard defines three profiles, including Baseline, Main and High, and further classifies in levels ranging from 1 to 5.1.

What's inside?

• H.264/AVC Standard Overview
• Video Compression Performance
• H.264/AVC Profiles and Levels
• Encoding Quality
• Conclusion