View my slides...

You can view the presentation slides for two recent talks here:
An overview of H.264 video compression
Book launch: H.264 Advanced Video Compression

- Iain

Book launch tomorrow - tune in for free...

Still time to register for tomorrow's book launch (16 June, 4pm UK time). I'll be giving a 30-minute presentation and answering any questions from viewers. Click to register:
http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/21438

After the talk is over, you will be able to re-play it using the link.
- Iain Richardson.

Book Launch: The H.264 Advanced Video Compression Standard

The new book has been available in the UK for a few weeks and should be available in the US and the rest of the world in June. I will launch the book via a free webcast on Wednesday 16th June 2010 at 4pm BST / 8am Pacific time / 11am East Coast US time. During the half-hour webcast I will give a brief overview of the main chapters. Participants will have the opportunity to post questions which I will answer during the talk. Click here to register for free:
http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/21438

- Iain Richardson

Comparison of VP8 and H.264

Google released the open-source WebM multimedia framework last week:
http://www.webmproject.org/
WebM includes the VP8 video codec.

Streamingmedia.com has published a comparison between VP8 and H.264:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/First-Look-H.264-and-VP8-Compared-67266.aspx

- Iain

High Efficiency Video Coding Standard

Work is continuing on the new video coding standard, currently known as "High Efficiency Video Coding" (HEVC). A Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) has been set up by ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG. Following a Call for Proposals in January, 27 proposals were submitted to the first meeting of the JCT-VC in April. Elements of some of these proposals have been combined to develop an initial Test Model, a starting point for development of the new standard. The initial Test Model has similarities to earlier standards such as H.264/AVC, including block-based intra/inter prediction, block transform and entropy coding. New features include increased prediction flexibility, more sophisticated interpolation filters, a wider range of block sizes and new entropy coding schemes. Coding performance varies across the different proposals. It looks like we might expect to see a 2x compression improvement compared with H.264/AVC (i.e. half the bitrate at the same visual quality), at the expense of a significant increase in computational complexity (perhaps 3x or more). You can find the technical proposals here.

The new book...

Just got an advance copy...

New book...

Just heard that I will receive some advance copies of my new book in a few days. It should be available in the UK very soon; I'll post a note here once I have a confirmed date for US and the rest of the world.
http://www.vcodex.com/h264book/index.html

- Iain