IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology

H.264/AVC is newest video coding standard of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group. The main goals of the H.264/AVC standardization effort have been enhanced compression performance and provision of a "network-friendly" video representation addressing "conversational" (video telephony) and "nonconversational" (storage, broadcast, or streaming) applicatio... View full abstract»

In order to reduce the bit rate of video signals, the standardized coding techniques apply motion-compensated prediction in combination with transform coding of the prediction error. By mathematical analysis, it is shown that aliasing components are deteriorating the prediction efficiency. In order to compensate the aliasing, two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional interpolation filters are de... View full abstract»

This paper reviews recent advances in using B pictures in the context of the draft H.264/AVC video-compression standard. We focus on reference picture selection and linearly combined motion-compensated prediction signals. We show that bidirectional prediction exploits partially the efficiency of combined prediction signals whereas multihypothesis prediction allows a more general form of B pictures... View full abstract»

This paper presents an overview of the transform and quantization designs in H.264. Unlike the popular 8/spl times/8 discrete cosine transform used in previous standards, the 4/spl times/4 transforms in H.264 can be computed exactly in integer arithmetic, thus avoiding inverse transform mismatch problems. The new transforms can also be computed without multiplications, just additions and shifts, i... View full abstract»

A concept for variable block-size transform coding is presented. It is called adaptive block-size transforms (ABT) and was proposed for coding of high resolution and interlaced video in the emerging video coding standard H.264/AVC. The basic idea of inter ABT is to align the block size used for transform coding of the prediction error to the block size used for motion compensation. Intra ABT emplo... View full abstract»

This paper describes the adaptive deblocking filter used in the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding standard. The filter performs simple operations to detect and analyze artifacts on coded block boundaries and attenuates those by applying a selected filter. View full abstract»

Context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) as a normative part of the new ITU-T/ISO/IEC standard H.264/AVC for video compression is presented. By combining an adaptive binary arithmetic coding technique with context modeling, a high degree of adaptation and redundancy reduction is achieved. The CABAC framework also includes a novel low-complexity method for binary arithmetic coding an... View full abstract»

This paper discusses two new frame types, SP-frames and SI-frames, defined in the emerging video coding standard, known as ITU-T Rec. H.264 or ISO/IEC MPEG-4/Part 10-AVC. The main feature of SP-frames is that identical SP-frames can be reconstructed even when different reference frames are used for their prediction. This property allows them to replace I-frames in applications such as splicing, ra... View full abstract»

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 wa... View full abstract»

Video transmission in wireless environments is a challenging task calling for high-compression efficiency as well as a network friendly design. Both have been major goals of the H.264/AVC standardization effort addressing "conversational" (i.e., video telephony) and "nonconversational" (i.e., storage, broadcast, or streaming) applications. The video compression performance of the H.264/AVC video c... View full abstract»

In video coding standards, a compliant bit stream must be decoded by a hypothetical decoder that is conceptually connected to the output of an encoder and consists of a decoder buffer, a decoder, and a display unit. This virtual decoder is known as the hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) in H.263 and the video buffering verifier in MPEG. The encoder must create a bit stream so that the hypothetic... View full abstract»

A unified approach to the coder control of video coding standards such as MPEG-2, H.263, MPEG-4, and the draft video coding standard H.264/AVC (advanced video coding) is presented. The performance of the various standards is compared by means of PSNR and subjective testing results. The results indicate that H.264/AVC compliant encoders typically achieve essentially the same reproduction quality as... View full abstract»

We study and analyze the computational complexity of a software-based H.264/AVC (advanced video codec) baseline profile decoder. Our analysis is based on determining the number of basic computational operations required by a decoder to perform the key decoding subfunctions. The frequency of use of each of the required decoding subfunctions is empirically derived using bitstreams generated from two... View full abstract»

An analysis of computational complexity is presented for an H.26L video decoder, based on extensive experiments on a general-purpose processor. In addition, platform-independent techniques to optimize an H.26L decoder implementation are given. Comparisons are carried out between our highly optimized version of H.26L, the public reference implementation of H.26L, and a highly optimized H.263+ imple... View full abstract»