Analyzing H.264 clips

I have put two examples of H.264 coded sequences on the downloads page. Both are short segments of the "Foreman" CIF video sequence, coded using the Baseline and Main profiles of H.264.

Use a viewer such as Elecard's Streameye to analyze the clips:

http://www.elecard.com/products/products-pc/professional/streameye/
(you can download a time-limited trial version).

Here's an screenshot of the Main Profile clip. You can see the P-slices (blue bars) and B-slices (green bars). Use the Streameye menus to examine frames, look at the distribution of macroblock types, motion vectors, etc.

What does the "H" in H.264 stand for?

I was asked this question today and I think it's a really good question: what does the "H" stand for in H.264 ?

H.264 is an ITU standard or "Recommendation". ITU Recommendations are
assigned letters and numbers; so everything that starts with H. is in
a similar area (audiovisual/multimedia) :
http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-h

Other groups of standards start with different letters, always a
letter and a number. E.g. P.910 is a standard for subjective quality measurement.

ISO/IEC standards have numbers, so MPEG-2 Video is ISO/IEC 13818-2. "MPEG" is a standardisation group within ISO/IEC.

H.264 is co-published with ISO/IEC MPEG so it also has an MPEG number. Confusingly,
it's given the same basic number as MPEG-4:

• MPEG-4 Visual (older standard) is ISO/IEC 14496-2 ("MPEG-4 Part 2")
• H.264/Advanced Video Coding is co-published as ISO/IEC 14496-10 ("MPEG-4 Part 10")

A list of a few current standards:
http://www.citeulike.org/user/xistenshal/tag/standard

Finally, a note about the publication date of standards. The ISO/IEC or ITU website lists the date of the most recent published version of a standard. However, this can be confusing. For example, ITU-T H.263 was first published in 1995, but the most recent updated version was published in 2005 (after the first publication of H.264). Generally, updated versions will correct errors in the text and (in some cases) add extensions. For a realistic timeline of standards development, look at the original publication date. In chronological order of original publication date:

• H.261
• MPEG-1
• MPEG-2 / H.262 (co-published)
• H.263
• MPEG-4 Visual
• H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 (co-published)
• VC-1

New tutorial on transform and quantization

New white paper / tutorial posted on the derivation of the 4x4 forward + inverse transforms. Comments welcome. - Iain.

Fully Configurable Video Coding

I gave a plenary talk at IEEE System on Chip Conference last week and used the opportunity to launch our new research topic, Fully Configurable Video Coding. The idea is to enable complete, dynamic reconfiguration of a video codec. The new concept is attracting a lot of interest from industry and researchers. Here's some more information.

Article on video compression patents

I've posted a new article on video compression patents and IPR. The article gives an overview of the IPR position related to video coding and video compression, with particular reference to video coding standards and patent licenses.

New version of H.264/AVC overview

I have posted a new version of my introductory overview, "What is H.264?". Visit the page and please contact me with any comments.

Computer-drawn or hand-drawn diagrams ?

I'm developing diagrams for a new edition of my book on H.264/AVC. I've been experimenting with hand-drawn vs. computer-drawn diagrams. I quite like the immediacy of hand-drawn diagrams. Here are a few examples - I'd like to have your opinions on these. Please leave a comment (or send me an email) with your views - do you prefer hand-drawn or computer-drawn?

The examples are in this file:
Figures_H264book_poll.pdf