H.264/AVC baseline profile decoder optimization on independent platform

In this paper, a real-time H.264/AVC baseline profile decoder is implemented on independent platform. Computationally intensive modules in the reference decoder are optimized for various hardware platforms. Especially, a fast group-based CAVLC entropy decoding algorithm is provided in detail, and several strategies are discussed from software optimization opinion. The experiments show that the speed of our developed software-based decoder is 3 times faster than that of the H.264/AVC reference decoder. The maximum decoding speed of 74 fps for CIF sequence is achieved on Intel Pentium 4 processor, with the same video quality as the reference decoder.