H.264 Overview

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a video coding standard that was developed by the Joint Video Team (JVT) of the ITU-T Visual Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG). Today the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard is used in more than 1 billion devices.

The work on H.264/MPEG-4 was split into 4 phases:

• Phase 1: Development of the first H.264/MPEG-4 AVC version:
  Specification of the Baseline, Main, and Extended profiles,
  December 2001 – May 2003.
• Phase 2: Development of Fidelity Range Extension (FRExt):
  Specification of the High profile and professional profiles,
  June 2003 – October 2004.
• Phase 3: Extension for Scalable Video Coding (SVC):
  Specification of the Scalable Baseline, Scalable High, and Scalable High Intra profiles,
  November 2005 – July 2007.
• Phase 4: Extension for Multiview Video Coding (MVC):
  Specification of the Stereo High and Multiview High profiles,
  July 2006 – March 2009.

The Video Communication and Applications department contributed actively to all phases of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC development.

In phase 1 (first version of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC), the Video Communication and Applications department contributed:

• Multi-frame motion-compensated prediction and multi-hypotheses prediction
• Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC)
• Fast adaptive binary arithmetic coding (M Coder)
• Tree-structured partitioning for motion-compensated prediction
• Rate-distortion optimized encoding

In phase 2 (fidelity range extension), the Video Communication and Applications department contributed:

• Base model for the development of the High profile
• Design for supporting 8×8 transforms
• Design for 8×8 intra prediction

In phase 3 (Scalable Video Coding, SVC), the Video Communication and Applications department contributed:

• The first model for SVC that became that first Working Draft and has remained almost unchanged (but was extended by additional concepts for interlaced, arbitrary resolution ratios, and bitstream re-writing)
• Hierarchical prediction structures
• Inter-layer prediction tools
• Single-loop decoding
• The key picture concept for quality scalability
• The concept of transform coefficient partitioning
• An RD-optimized multi-layer encoder control

In phase 4 (Multiview Coding, MVC), the Video Communication and Applications department contributed in collaboration with the 3D Coding Group:

• The first model for MVC that became that first Working Draft and has remained almost unchanged (only additional high-level signaling concepts have been included)

In all phases, the Video Communication and Applications department was involved in the administration of the JVT standardization in various ways:

• Thomas Wiegand has been appointed as Co-Chair and Editor of the JVT project.
• Detlev Marpe has been appointed as Editor for phase 2.
• Heiko Schwarz has been appointed as Editor starting with phase 3 of the standardization and as Coordinator for the SVC reference software.
• Karsten Sühring has been appointed as Coordinator for the JM reference software.

1. T. Wiegand, G. J. Sullivan, G. Bjøntegaard, and A. Luthra, "Overview of the H.264/AVC Video Coding Standard," IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, July 2003.
2. D. Marpe, T. Wiegand, and S. Gordon, "H.264/MPEG4-AVC Fidelity Range Extensions: Tools, Profiles, Performance, and Application Areas," IEEE Intl. Conf. on Image Processing, Sept. 2005.
3. H. Schwarz, D. Marpe, and T. Wiegand, "Overview of the Scalable Video Coding Extension of the H.264/AVC Standard," IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Sept. 2007.
4. P. Merkle, A. Smolic, K. Müller, and T. Wiegand, "Efficient Prediction Structures for Multiview Video Coding," IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Nov. 2007.
5. H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Standard.
6. JM Reference Software.