H.264 "zero" latency video encoding and decoding for time-critical applications

By Kishan Jainandunsing, PhD, W&W Communications
September 07, 2007 -- dspdesignline.com

Early digital video compression solutions primarily focused on applications that do not require real-time interaction, such as in TV broadcast, video-on-demand and DVD playback. In these applications the latency between the source and the decoded video is not important and can easily extend to several seconds. However, in applications where there is a closed feedback loop, such as video conference and videophone, latency is the most crucial aspect of the system, as it determines whether the system will be stable or not. Keeping the latency of a video codec in such systems as minimal as possible is the proper approach. In many such applications latency measured in sub 10 milliseconds is crucial and it takes a radically different approach from traditional ones to achieve a low latency implementation of the popular H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Part 10) video coding standard.

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