Abstract
The recently developed H.264/AVC video codec with Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension, compresses non-scalable (single-layer) and scalable video significantly more efficiently than MPEG-4 Part 2. Since the traffic characteristics of encoded video have a significant impact on its network transport, we examine the bit rate-distortion and bit rate variability- distortion performance of single-layer video traffic of the H.264/AVC codec and SVC extension using long CIF resolution videos. We also compare the traffic characteristics of the hierarchical B frames (SVC) versus classical B frames. In addition, we examine the impact of frame size smoothing on the video traffic to mitigate the effect of bit rate variabilities. We find that compared to MPEG-4 Part 2, the H.264/AVC codec and SVC extension achieve lower average bit rates at the expense of significantly increased traffic variabilities that remain at a high level even with smoothing. Through simulations we investigate the implications of this increase in rate variability on (i) frame losses when transmitting a single video, and (ii) on a bufferless statistical multiplexing scenario with restricted link capacity and information loss. We find increased frame losses, and rate-distortion/rate-variability/encoding complexity tradeoffs. We conclude that solely assessing bit rate-distortion improvements of video encoder technologies is not sufficient to predict the performance in specific networked application scenarios.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 4547482 |
Pages (from-to) | 698-718 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting |
Volume | 54 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2008 |
Keywords
- Frame loss ratio
- H.264/AVC
- Hierarchical B frames
- Rate variability- distortion (VD)
- Rate-distortion (RD)
- SVC
- Single-layer video
- Statistical multiplexing
- Video quality
- Video traffic
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Media Technology
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering