Book Description
Part 10 of MPEG-4 describes the Advanced Video Coding (AVC) method widely known as H.264. H.264 is the product of a collaborative effort known as the Joint Video Team(JVT). The final draft of the standard was completed in May of 2003 and since then H.264 has become one of the most commonly used formats for compression [1]. H.264, unlike previous standards, describes a myriad of coding options that involve variable block size inter prediction methods, nine different intra prediction modes, multi frame prediction and B frame prediction. There are a huge number of options for coding that will tend to generate a different number of coded bits and different reconstruction quality. A video encoder is challenged to minimize coded bitrate and maximize quality. However, choosing the coding mode of a macroblock to achieve this is a difficult problem due to the large number of coding combinations and parameters. Rate Distortion Optimization is an effective technique for choosing the 'best' coding mode for a macroblock. This thesis presents two features of an H.264 encoder, multi frame prediction and B frame prediction. Additionally, a Rate Distortion Optimization scheme is implemented with the features to improve overall performance of the encoder.
