Very Low-Delay H.264 Codec for Consumer Application

Abstract

We have newly developed a very low-delay full HD codec with relatively lower bitrate focusing especially on consumer or small business applications. As a result of analysis on several important factors for achieving a low-delay codec, we have focused on reduction of a buffering delay. In order to achieve a target delay with as little degradation of the picture quality as possible, we have developed a novel bitrate control algorithm of keeping the maximum carry over. We made experiments of the algorithm on our versatile H.264 codec platform, and obtained the result of 10 ms minimum delay at a bitrate of 8 to 10 Mbps.