The H.264/AVC Video Coding Standard for the Next Generation Multimedia Communication

The capacity of a communication channel is determined by its bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. For a digital user, these parameters determine the bit rate and the probability of error and so affect the achievable quality of service. In the recent multimedia communication systems, bandwidth is still a limiting factor. Hence, effective video compression techniques are essential to reduce the amount of video data. The new H.264/AVC video coding standard jointly presented by the ITU-T and ISO/IEC experts groups has achieved a significant improvement in compression performance compared to the previous standards. It promises to deliver good quality of video at low bit rates. However implies a need for useful operation of the video compression algorithms in error prone environments. This article presents an overview of the H.264/AVC features if the probability of error is more than normal values, receiving the correct data is not guaranteed. This in terms of video compression techniques and error resilient coding. Some simulation results are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of thecodec.