Video Technology
DM642 | H.264 Codec |
H.264/MPEG4 AVC Standard |
H.264 Performance |
H.264 Patent Licensing Fees
DSP Research has over ten years of experience designing advanced DSP
boards with Texas Instruments processors. The latest media processor from
TI, the DM642, is quickly becoming the preferred choice for advanced video
processing, and DSP Research is leading the way with its line of H.264
Video Compression boards.
A key component in the Video Compression systems from DSP Research is the
very efficient and compact H.264 codec which runs on the DM642. This codec
has been developed over a period of two years by DSP Research's parent
company W&W Communications. This codec implementation is first to market
and is also available for licensing for your own hardware. Please see
http://www.wwcoms.com for more
details.
H.264 is the most advanced video coding standard available today. It
uses many new coding techniques not available in MPEG2, MPEG4 and H.263.
This new standard is taking the industry by storm and was jointly
developed by the ISO MPEG and ITU standardization bodies. This chart shows
the evolution of video coding standards.
For those of you who want to learn more about video compression and the H.264 standard, the following
site is an excellent place to start:
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Introduction
For you who are already familiar with video compression standards and want to know more about the H.264 standard, the
following publication (19 pages) is an excellent source:
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Overview (PDF) (2.986KB)
A draft of the whole H.264 Standard (264 pages) from the 'ITU-T 8th
meeting: Geneva, Switzerland, May 23-27 2003', is also downloadable below:
The whole H.264 Standard (draft from
May 23-27
2003) (PDF) (1,334KB)
The new H.264 video compression standard is the first to be ratified by
both the ISO/IEC and ITU-T. It raises the bar considerably compared to
MPEG4-ASP and yields better picture quality while significantly lowering
the bit rate. This allows lower overall system cost, reduced
infrastructure requirements and enables many new video applications. H.264
is considered the greatest achievement in video compression in
the past 10 years and is already finding its way into many mainstream
video applications.
Below follow some practical comparisons between different coding
technologies for 90 min of DVD quality video:
One more great aspect of H.264 is the licensing fee structure by the
patent holders of technology that went into the standard. MPEG4 was
significantly hampered by complicated and excessive licensing fees
demanded by its patent holder. For H.264 the industry has learned from its
mistakes with MPEG-4 and created a very simple and low cost licensing structure.
There are two H.264 patent licensing organizations: MPEG-LA and Via
Licensing. Both have similar licensing terms. Here are some key points
from the MPEG-LA patent licensing organization:
