Chapter 1: Invited Addresses and Tutorials on Signals, Coding,
  Systems and Intelligent Techniques

Title: The H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC Standard: Core Coding Technology and Recent Extensions.

Author(s): Detlev Marpe

Address: Fraunhofer Inst. HHI Berlin

Reference: 12th International Workshop on Systems, Signals and Image Processing pp. 43 - 43

Abstract/Summary: This tutorial will present and discuss the main recent advances in standardized video coding technology, as being developed collaboratively by members of both the ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG organizations during the standardization of the new H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard. Being designed as a generic video coding standard for a broad range of applications, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC has already received an overwhelming amount of attention from industry. Application areas are ranging from videoconferencing over mobile TV and broadcasting of standard-/high-definition TV content up to very high-quality video applications such as professional digital video recording or digital cinema / large-screen digital imagery. The first part of the tutorial is devoted to the core technology of the H.264/MPEG- 4 AVC video coding layer, as specified in the 2003 version of the standard. We will focus on the key innovations such as given by enhanced motion-compensated prediction capabilities, low-complexity integer transforms, content-adaptive in-loop deblocking filter, and enhanced entropy coding methods. We will then highlight the technical features of the so-called Fidelity Range Extensions (FRExt) of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC addressing the specific needs of rapidly growing higher-fidelity video applications. Finally, we will provide an understanding of the basic concepts of the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extensions, as the most recent and presently ongoing work for extending the capabilities of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. We will show how the present design of those SVC extensions supports the functionalities of spatial scalability, SNR scalability, and temporal scalability as well as their combinations in a maximally-consistent fashion relative to the current syntax and decoding process of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. This tutorial is intended for researchers, students and engineers who are interested in gaining an understanding of the recent advances in standardized video coding technology.

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