Coding Video

1Introduction

The scene: my video coding research lab at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland, 1994. ‘You're working on video compression?’ asked my visitor. ‘Isn't that going to be unnecessary in a few years? After all, network bandwidth is increasing every year. We've already got 10 Mbps Ethernet and we'll soon have 100 Mbps. Video compression will be redundant by the year 2000’.

My visitor predicted that research into video compression would fade away as ever‐increasing bandwidth and storage capacity made it possible to send uncompressed, full‐quality video with ease. He offered me a wager, that my research topic, video coding, would be redundant by the year 2000. If only I had taken that bet! In fact, at the present time, the need for efficient and effective video coding is perhaps greater than ever. Generation and consumption of video content have grown more quickly than available bandwidth has in recent years. This is because of the emergence of user‐generated content that comes most notably from mobile devices. Consumption has also increased through changing viewing patterns – often with multiple simultaneous streams being viewed in a single household – and the move to higher‐resolution content, such as High Definition and beyond.

This book is about video coding, also known as video compression. A video encoder converts digital video into a compressed form, that is, a form that takes up less storage or transmission capacity, known as coded video. A video ...