Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Digital Video Coding Techniques
and Standards
Feng Pan
Video Architect, ViXS Systems Inc.,
245 Consumers Road, Toronto, M2J 1R3 Canada
epan@vixs.com
Summary.
The last two decades have witnessed great advances in multimedia tech-
nologies, which allow the exchange of all sorts of audiovisual content seamlessly and
pervasively. The great success of various video coding standards, such as MPEG-1
in Video CD and CDROM, MPEG-2 in digital television and DVD video, as well as
H.263 in video communication, has revolutionized how we communicate and enter-
tain. Video coding standards provide the common language that the encoder and
the decoder use to communicate. It also makes the production of video compression
systems possible so that the cost can be kept to an acceptable level.
In this chapter we introduce the basic principles of digital video compression,
focusing on the main techniques used in various video coding standards. We also
give a brief overview of the various video coding standards and their applications.
2.1 Fundamentals of Video Data Compression
The compression of digital video signal is essential as the raw RGB video is
very bulky. It is di
cult, if not impossible, to store or transmit uncompressed
video signals in most applications. For example, according to PAL SDTV
video specification, the requirements are as follows:
• in the spatial domain:
one frame has 704 pixels per line in width,
one frame has 576 lines per frame in height;
• in the temporal domain:
25 frames is transmitted in 1 second;
• in the data representation:
one pixel is composed of 3 color components,
one color component has one byte,
one byte has 8 bits.
Thus, the data rate of a PAL SDTV video would be,
