Michael unfolded (.com)

John Bartlett is the Vice President of NetForecast. He has written three very interesting blog posts on H.264/SVC. These are easy to understand executive summaries, which will definitely come in useful when I need to explain this part of my work to non-experts.

Scalable Video Coding Solves Video Conferencing Scaling Issues
In this post, John provides a short introduction on layered video coding (with focus on H.264/SVC of course) in the context of video conferencing.

Scalable Video and Packet Loss
In this post, John explains how Forward Error Correction (FEC) can be used more efficiently with H.264/SVC than with traditional, non scalable, codecs, by only protecting the H.264/SVC base layer.

Scalable Video and Heterogeneous Endpoints
In this post, John points out how H.264/SVC enables to service heterogeneous end devices much more efficiently than non scalable codecs, thanks to its scalability features.

Scalable Video and Scaling of Deployment
In this post, John focuses on how SVC helps to overcome a number of issues when trying to deploy video conferencing to every desktop instead of just a few dedicated conference centers.

For a great technical introduction to H.264/SVC, please see “Overview of the Scalable Video Coding Extension of the H.264/AVC Standard“.

For more adaptation-specific information on H.264/SVC, you can access several of my publications on my Curriculum Vitae & Publications page (scroll down to page 5/6 of my CV and click on the “ITEC/TR” links). Additionally, I’m currently organizing a workshop on “Impact of Scalable Video Coding on Multimedia Provisioning” (SVCVision) where you can discuss the latest advances in H.264/SVC with academic and industry experts. We are still accepting contributions (research papers, demos, position papers, …) as well! Additional publications can be found at our research group.

If you are interested in H.264/SVC, please leave a comment or contact me directly.