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Compression Standards
Video Codecs
- AVS
- Primarily defined and used by Chinese consumer electronics vendors.
- AVS is implemented in chips from:
- Celestial - satellite receiver set-top box chips with built-in AVS hardware accelerator
- Vimicro - multimedia mobile phone chips that run AVS in software on a programmable processor
- AVS is implemented in systems from Haier, Huawei, Lenovo, SinoSat, Skyworth, and others.
- VC-1
- Real Video
- XviD
- QuickTime
- Windows Media Video 9
- DivX
- VP7, VP6, VP5, VP4, VP3
- H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC)
- MPEG-4
- H.263
- MPEG-2 (H.262)
- MPEG-1
- H.261
- JPEG 2000
- Uses wavelet compression isntead of cosine transform compression.
- Has no inter-frame dependencies. This means that errors are not propagated from
one frame to the next and there is no latency in displaying decoded frames due to
out-of-order frame coding. Without inter-frame prediction, JPEG 2000 typically
yields lower compression-quality than other advanced video coding standards.
- Requires similar processor performance requirements on the encoder and decoder
unlike other video coding standards that are asymmetric and require greater
processor performance in the encoder than the decoder.
History
Since the early 1990s a large number of digital video compression
standards have been developed. These are known as enCODECodes or
CODECs.
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year
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1985
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
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1990
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1991
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1992
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1993
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1994
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1995
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1996
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1997
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1998
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1999
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2000
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2001
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2002
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ITU-T standards
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H.261
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H.263
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ITU-T / MPEG joint standards
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H.262 / MPEG-2
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H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC
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MPEG standards
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MPEG-1
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MPEG-4
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On2 Technologies standards
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VP3
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VP4
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VP5
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VP6
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DivX Networks standards
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DivX
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Microsoft standards
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Windows Media Video
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Apple Computer standards
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QuickTime
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XviD open source standards
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XviD
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Real Networks standards
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Real Video
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year
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1985
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
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1990
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1991
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1995
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2000
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2004
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Many of these CODECs compete for acceptance in a single target market.
Each CODEC has been designed with optimizations for specific target
applications. However, all of these CODECs are based on the same
principles:
- copy data from previously coded frames
- copy neighboring data within a frame
- encode the information needed to correct errors from the previous
two steps.
All of these CODEC standards can be used to encode captured raw digital
video data into a compressed bitstream and decode a compressed bitstream
into raw digital video data for display. Each CODEC standard allows for
some degree of trade-off between the three key parameters, bit
rate, resolution (including frame rate), and quality.
Bit rate is measured in bits/second. Resolution is measured in
pixels/line x lines/frame at frames/second. Quality is a subjective
measure and can not easily be quantified. One method of approximating a
measure of quality is the signal to noise ratio between encoded/decoded
video and the original raw source.
Sources of free video clips
raw YUV
Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) test sequences
YUV video player for MS Windows
H.264
Vanguard Software Solutions
FastVDO High Profile test streams
Macromedia Flash Video 8 / On2 Technologies Flix / VP6
On2 Technologies
VC-1 / Windows Media Video 9
Microsoft
DivX
DivX Networks
Conformance Testing
- Tektronix
- Location: Beaverton, OR
- NYSE:TEK
- Products:
- MTS400 and MTS430 MPEG test systems that perform real-time transport stream
and "deferred-time" elementary stream analysis and reports errors and statistics
for MPEG-2, DVB, ISDB, ATSC, DVB-H, 3GPP, & IP formats
- MTS4SA stand alone software for a 1.2+ GHz Intel machine running Windows that
performs the same functions as the MTS400
- MTS4EA stand alone software for non-real-time elementary stream analysis of
H.261, MPEG-2 MP@ML, MPEG-2 MP@H-1440L and MP@HL, MPEG-4 ASP (levels 0-5), H.263,
H.263+, H.264/AVC Baseline and Extended Profiles (levels 1-5), H.264/AVC Main
Profile (levels 1-5), H.264/AVC High Profile with FRExt, SMPTE VC-1, Windows Media
V9, and 3GPP
- MTM400 MPEG transport stream monitor for DVB, ISDB, and ATSC streams
- MLM1000 multi-layer MPEG transport stream monitor for DVB, ISDB, and ATSC
streams
- MTX100 MPEG-2, DVB, and ATSC synthetic stream generator
- AD954 portable MPEG-2, DVB, and ATSC non-real-time analyzer
- Many other PAL and NTSC signal generators and monitors
- Acquisitions:
- Vqual
- Location: Bristol, UK
- founded in 2002
- Vclips clips for video compression, testing, and evaluation including clips
designed to stress an encoder and clips to stress a decoder. Some libraries of clips
are natural video and others are synthetic.
- Vprove software for video compression analysis, optimization & evaluation
- Certify broadcast content conformance checking
- Customers include Philips, Zoran, Sarnoff, Ceva, Broadcom/Alphamosaic, Sunplus, Vitec, Atsana
- Sarnoff
- "Emmy-winning" compliance bitstreams, in used since 1994, including:
- MPEG-2/ATSC Syntax Bitstreams
- ATSC Format Bitstreams
- MPEG-2/ATSC Stress Bitstreams
- MPEG-2/ATSC PSIP Bitstreams
- DTV Closed Captioning Bitstreams
- Cable Format Bitstreams
- Cable HD Format Bitstreams
- ATSC Transport Bitstreams
- MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Syntax Tests
- Though Sarnoff licenses compliance bitstreams, Vqual
likes to mention in its press releases that Sarnoff itself uses Vqual
bitstreams, presumably for MPEG-4 and H.264 where Vqual has jumped in
early since Sarnoff's strength seems to be MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and ATSC
bitstreams.
- Fraunhofer Gesellschaft - Heinrich Hertz Institut for Telecommunications
- H.264 test streams for different profiles including:
- syntax tests
- stress tests
- typical broadcasts
- pathological cases
- Allegro
- Location: Montbonnot, France
- provider of MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) certification tools and compliance bitstreams as well as
encoder and transcoder software IP
- Products:
- H264 BP Level 1.3 stream suite
- H264 BP Level 2 stream suite
- H264 BP Level 3 stream suite
- H264 BP Level 3.1 stream suite
- H264 MP Level 3 stream suite
- H264 MP Level 4 stream suite
- H264 MP Level 4.1 stream suite
- H264 HP Level 4 stream suite
- H264 HP Level 4.1 stream suite
- A/V sync system stream suite
- changing picture resolution stream suites
- changing aspect ration stream suite
- changing codec stream suite
- broadcast multiplexer systems and software IP
- Customers:
- ADB
- ATI
- Broadcom
- Ceva
- Chips & Media
- Conexant
- Hisilicon
- Imagination Technologies
- Intel
- LG
- LSI Logic
- Philips
- Prime
- Sagem
- SciWorx
- Sigma Designs
- STMicroelectronics
- Texas Instruments
- Thomson
- TPS
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Copyright © 2005-2006 Jonah Probell. All rights reserved.
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