H.264/AVC over IP

H.264 is the ITU-T's new, nonbackward compatible video compression Recommendation that significantly outperforms all previous video compression standards. It consists of a video coding layer (VCL) which performs all the classic signal processing tasks and generates bit strings containing coded macroblocks, and a network adaptation layer (NAL) which adapts those bit strings in a network friendly way. The paper describes the use of H.264 coded video over best-effort IP networks, using RTP as the real-time transport protocol. After a description of the environment, the error-resilience tools of H.264 and the draft specification of the RTP payload format are introduced. Next the performance of several possible VCL- and NAL-based error-resilience tools of H.264 are verified in simulations.