Performance analysis of H.261 and H.263 video coding algorithms

Video compression algorithms continue to forge video applications to increasingly lower bandwidths. The onus at present is to enable real time video transmission on the telephone lines and the wireless network. H.263 is one of the latest video coding standards that proposes several enhancements to the H.261 video coding algorithm. This paper presents a comparison of these two standard video codecs, namely H.261 and H.263. The parameters of comparison are the degree of compression and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) achieved by these codecs. The paper also evaluates the behaviour of H.263 at different bit rates with various optional modes active. From the results obtained, it is concluded that H.263 performs best at very low bit rates (28.8 kHz and below), and existing codecs could perform much better if certain features of the H.263 guidelines are incorporated into them.