Motivation and Implementation of a Software H.264 Real-Time CIF Encoder for Mobile TV Broadcast Applications

An encoding system was implemented purely in software for sending H.264 video multicast to mobile devices. The H.264 encoder is a multi-threaded parallel-GOP encoder. It is capable of running in real-time with an AMD Opteron 1.8 GHz dual-core platform in baseline profile at CIF resolution at 1 Mbps-Real-time video encoding is accomplished with aggressive single instruction multiple data assembly code optimizations and advanced algorithms. A time control algorithm was developed to quell the mode decision process from spending too much time per frame. Transmission of the audio and video streams is on an IP layer over WiFi and DVB-H. DVB-H is chosen for its power saving and reliability features. Using the IP network, the encoder can be repurposed for applications other than mobile broadcast video.