A Practical Survey of H.264 Capabilities

H.264 is excellent for transmitting rich interactive media over narrow and broadband networks, and can be easily integrated into existing and future networks. Video compression efficiency is improved by at least a factor of two over the MPEG-2 standard. H.264 provides bit-rate adaptivity and scalability, which addresses the needs of different applications when transmitted over heterogeneous networks. This is also necessary for applications where the receiving device is not capable of displaying full resolution or full quality video images. This paper provides new insights into the key features of the H.264 based on actual experiments. It also illustrates how the strengths of different capabilities can be combined in a complementary fashion. Among the key attributes of H.264 that were tested include profile type, CABAC and CAVLC, RDO, and FMO error concealment.