Traffic and Quality Characterization of Single-Layer Video Streams Encoded with the H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding Standard and Scalable Video Coding Extension

• Published in: IEEE transactions on broadcasting Vol. 54; no. 3; pp. 698 - 718
• Main Authors: Van der Auwera, G., David, P.T., Reisslein, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-09-2008; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Automatic voltage control; Bit rate; Codec; Codecs; Coders; Coding; Coding standards; Encoders; Frame loss ratio; Frames; H.264/AVC; hierarchical B frames; MPEG 4 Standard; rate variability-distortion (VD); rate-distortion (RD); single-layer video; Smoothing; Smoothing methods; Static VAr compensators; statistical multiplexing; Streaming media; Studies; SVC; Telecommunication traffic; Traffic; Traffic engineering; Traffic flow; Video coding; Video compression; video quality; video traffic
• ISSN: 0018-9316; 1557-9611
• DOI: 10.1109/TBC.2008.2000422

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.