New Standardized Extensions of MPEG4-AVC/H.264 for Professional-Quality Video Applications

To support high quality video applications, the Joint Video Team (JVT) has recently added five new profiles, two new supplemental enhancement information (SEI) messages, and two new extended gamut color space indicators to the MPEG4-AVC/H.264 video coding standard. The new profiles include substantial feature enhancements for high-quality video applications, including improved-efficiency 4:4:4 video format coding, improved-efficiency lossless macroblock coding, coding 4:4:4 video pictures using three separately-coded color planes, and support of bit depths up to 14 bits per sample. The new features were developed to support a wide range of applications where high quality video compression is demanded, including professional and semi-professional scenarios in particular. They also anticipate the introduction of higher fidelity displays. In this paper, the new extensions are presented along with quantitaive estimates of the benefits of the new features and a discussion o the target aplication environments.