A Little Compression Can Go a Long Way
With the internet quickly becoming the common utility for the world to gather, exchange, and distribute information and entertainment in many different forms, it is about time that video became a big part of that exchange. One technology that is making that happen is the video compressor/decompressor (codec) standard known as H.264. Also known as MPEG-4 AVC, this little compression scheme is slowly but surely changing the way video is watched, used and distributed both on and off the internet.
The H.264 video codec standard was developed by two video standards bodies, the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG). It began as the ITU-T H.26L standard and when the ISO/MPEG began developing a similar standard they both decided to develop it through a partnership known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The goal of the new standard was to deliver good quality video at bitrates that were half or less than those of previous standards including MPEG-2, which is used on DVDs and digital television broadcast in the United States. They also wanted the new standard to be applicable across all uses of video from low bitrate, low resolution video on the web to high bitrate, high resolution video on video discs and everything in between. More technical details can be found on the H.264 Wikipedia page.
Since the initial draft standard was was accepted by both the ISO/IEC and the ITU-T in May 2003, the adoption of it has been slow but steady. The first big adoption of it was by Apple Inc. They quickly integrated the new standard into their quicktime format and highly encouraged its use by expanding the movie trailers video gallery on their website to include high-definition trailers, all encoded using quicktime and H.264. Later in October of 2005, Apple began selling TV shows, short films and music videos, all encoded in H.264, on the iTunes Store as well as added video playback to their popular iPod player. And less than a year later in September 2006, they began selling feature-length movies on iTunes at near-DVD quality. But more recently, Apple has utilized H.264 to deliver downloadable HD movie rentals on it’s Apple TV device.
With the addition of H.264 into Apple’s Quicktime 7, podcasters began expanding from doing audio-only shows to doing video shows as well. With H.264 delivering good quality video at significantly lower bitrates than MPEG-2 and even MPEG-4, downloadable video began being a reasonable distribution method for these independent producers. And with video podcasting being integrated into podcasting clients like iTunes and Miro, delivering video over the internet is becoming more widely accepted.
But Apple is not the only one adopting H.264. It was recently adopted by the user submitted video site YouTube. Since June 2007, YouTube has been encoding all newly uploaded videos in both Flash video and H.264, as well as encoding their back catalog, to provide YouTube to both iPhone and Apple TV users. And soon after, Adobe announced that they would be adding H.264 support to their Flash Player which will allow them to deliver high-definition video through their Flash video format.
On the other side of the coin, H.264 is not only being adopted for small format and internet video. When the latest high-definition video disc formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, were being developed, they both adopted H.264 as a required codec. This means that all HD DVD and Blu-ray players can playback H.264 encoded video. H.264 is also finding its way into consumer camcorders. Many of the high-definition camcorders that are produced today are using the AVCHD format developed by Sony and Panasonic. AVCHD uses H.264 to compress the video from the camcorder to fit it on to various media, including flash cards, hard disk drives and mini-DVDs, which usually have smaller capacities than traditional miniDV and VHS-C tapes.
Broadcast television around the world is also turning its attention to H.264. In late 2004, the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) standards committee in Europe approved the use of H.264 for television broadcasts. Brazil and Norway are both using H.264 for their terrestrial broadcasts while France has made it a requirement for all HDTV receivers. Many other countries, including New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, Ukraine, and Poland, have plans to use it in the near future for their terrestrial broadcast while Japan and Hong Kong are currently using it for their newer digital video services. As well, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards body for the United States is looking into the future use of H.264 in optional enhanced terrestrial television broadcasts. [1]
But what does this mean for the everyday person? How might this impact you or me? One big potential impact that H.264 has on us as viewers is our viewing habits. With H.264 making the internet a viable distribution method for video, we may no longer be slaves to the TV schedule or movie theater show times. With video being delivered over then internet, we are now more easily able to view content on-demand and work it into our own schedules. This is a trend that has been growing in recent years with the advent of Tivo and other Digital Video Recorders (DVR) that allow us to automatically record television shows and watch them at our convenience. But I believe that DVRs are merely a stepping stone to true on-demand content viewing. With H.264, video content can be retrieved and begin being viewed in a matter of seconds or, for higher quality content, automatically downloaded for viewing later.
With the internet as a method of distribution, both commercial and independently produced content have equal footing and opportunity to reach the mass audience. We have already seen this with the music industry where both big record labels and smaller independents exist as equals on the iTunes store and Amazon’s MP3 store. H.264 has the ability to do the same for the movie and television industry. With both big commercial entities and small independent producers having access to similar tools for video production, real competition can begin.
In my opinion, the most exciting transformation can occur in the living room. With H.264 and internet distribution, the possibility of having a centralized viewing experience, whether it be commercial content, independent content or user-submitted content, becomes possible. Imagine that when you turn on your TV, instead of seeing the last channel you were watching, you are greeted with a menu. On this menu is a number of new videos for you to watch, including movies, television shows, podcasts, and videos your friends have made, as well as options to go find other videos. Now instead of flipping through the channels to find something to watch, you can just go through the content that you have either already downloaded or subscribed to or go find other new content. No longer would you mindlessly flip through the channels, instead you would either browse around for something that interests you that you may then subscribe to, or catch up on the videos that you have missed since you last turned on your TV. With H.264 quickly becoming the standard for internet video and devices like Tivo, Apple TV, and Xbox 360, this scenario is quickly becoming a reality.