Video Codecs

MPEG-1/2 Video is widely used in Video CDs, Digital cable/satellite TV, DVD formats. MPEG-2 supports higher quality video than MPEG-1. MPEG-1 standard profile supports up to 352x288 resolution, 1.5 Mbps bit rate. MPEG-2 standard profile supports up to 720x480 resolution and 4 Mbps to 9 Mbps.

H.263 standard was developed in 1996 by ITU-T VCEG as enhancement to existing H.261 standard. H.263 was evolution in video compression technology to fulfil demand of video conferencing in low bit rate communication. H.263 introduced new tools for better compression with lower complexity in decoding. These new tools were,

• Advanced INTRA Coding (Differentially encoding DC coefficient in intra frame)
• Advanced Prediction Mode (4 motion vectors per macro block)
• Unrestricted Motion Vector Mode (predicted macro block can be outside the frame boundry)
• Arithmetic Coding
• Deblocking Filter (to reduce blocky effect)
• Portable Audio players

There are public and proprietary variations in H.263 bit stream.

H.264 was joint development of MPEG and VCEG which aimed at better compression than H.263 and MPEG-4 Part 2. H.264 is also known as ‘Advanced Video Coding (AVC)', ‘MPEG-4 Part 10' and ‘ITU-T Recommendation H.264'. H.264 provides approximately 50-70% more compression than earlier standards.

H.264 introduced following new techniques for better compression

• Reference pictures can be used in Inter prediction.
• Prediction is formed from a macro block or 4x4 luma blocks.
• Integer IDCT
• Quarter pixel motion compensation
• CAVLC, CABAC
• Bi directional Prediction
• Field Coding
• Weighted Prediction
• Deblocking filter

MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2 of ISO/IEC 14496) is a comprehensive standard for visual content. Visual content on which standard operates are moving video, video objects, animated human, static texture etc. The standard provides methods and tools for representing visual data in compressed form. The implementation here relates to video content only.

Picus Tech's implementation for MPEG-4 video includes Advanced Simple Profile, which is superset of Simple Profile and can provide more compression.

H.264 was joint development of MPEG and VCEG which aimed at better compression than H.263 and MPEG-4 Part 2. H.264 is also known as ‘Advanced Video Coding (AVC)', ‘MPEG-4 Part 10' and ‘ITU-T Recommendation H.264'. H.264 provides approximately 50-70% more compression than earlier standards. Picus Tech's implementation for H.264 video encoder includes Baseline Profile.

MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2 of ISO/IEC 14496) is a comprehensive standard for visual content. Visual content on which standard operates are moving video, video objects, animated human, static texture etc. Picus Tech's implementation for MPEG-4 video encoder includes Simple Profile.