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H.264 Encoding and Delivery for Mobile

H.264 Encoding and Delivery for Mobile
As broadcasters increasingly target mobile devices for video delivery, theyre embracing H.264 compression technologies to ensure a top-quality video experience. Selecting the right encoder and methodologies throughout the entire media delivery ecosystem is critical in delivering the best video experience to users. Not all mobile devices support all formats; however, most mobile video transports support the H.264 codec (also known as MPEG-4 AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10). First-generation mobile devices relied heavily on Adobe Flash, QuickTime or Windows Media, but all of these transports have been updated to support H.264 and most of todays video-enabled devices include embedded hardware for decoding H.264 video. In fact, H.264 is now the accepted standard for communications, broadcast, and streaming applications, and is embedded within Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, iPhone, iPod, PlayStation, Nero, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc technologies. Bandwidth and storage savings is perhaps the strongest driver for H.264s acceptance across all segments of the network video industry; by some estimates, the codec can reduce bandwidth costs by up to 60 percent. H.264 can stream higher quality with low latency and less bandwidth consumption compared to other compression standards, and its ability to produce great results with lower bitrates make it ideal for transmission over 3G cellular networks. Mobile delivery considerations For any mobile delivery application, the biggest challenge lies in the bandwidth and decoding capabilities of the device itself since each device has different capacities and different resources to work with. Because of that, the streams need to be prepared or preformatted accordingly based on the target audience, which determines which mobile device is being used. This task is greatly simplified with H.264, since its the one compression type that can be decided by most devices on the market today. To accommodate variances in network and device capabilities two common techniques have emerged Dynamic (for RTMP Flash) and Adaptive (for HTTP Live Streaming on Apple iOS and other systems) streaming. Both techniques rely on providing synchronized H.264 streams of the same content but at different bandwidths (and other encoding parameters such as resolution, frame rate, etc.). Choosing encoding systems When evaluating encoding systems for media delivery using H.264, one thing to keep in mind is the relative complexity of the standard, which requires eight times the processing power for encoding and three times the processing power for decoding. Encoding systems can be either hardware or software based. While hardware based systems typically have a performance edge overcoming latencies associated with software compression systems, software systems typically have higher quality and flexibility. Software systems also have the advantage of scaling over time with rapid advances in open platform computing power. Although bulky (being server platform based) and sometimes difficult to setup and keep running (for Windows platform based systems), software systems do achieve higher quality, bandwidth efficiency, and output flexibility with regard to the number of streams and formats. The delivery topology Most live video demands today are at event sites. When establishing Internet streams from event sites the optimal configuration is to send 10 streams to the cloud 5 varying bitrate streams for Dynamic Flash and 5 varying bitrate streams for adaptive HLS. This is clearly not the most optimal use of bandwidth 10 streams of the same

Copyright 2011 Haivision Network Video. All rights reserved. The Haivision logo, Furnace, Mako, Makito, Barracuda, Piranha, Stingray, InStream, Torpedo, and CoolSign are trademarks of Haivision Network Video. Other trademarks identified in this document are the property of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.

White Paper
H.264 Encoding and Delivery for Mobile
source. Technologies such as MPEG SVC (Scalable Video Coding) have promised to eliminate this inefficiency but the distribution challenges for this advanced technology are very difficult. Instead the market is turning rapidly to cloud transcoding to optimize contribution bandwidth by taking advantage of the abundant computing and network power available in the cloud. With cloud transcoding a single optimized high resolution stream can be send from the event to the cloud and at that point transcoded to multiple bitrates and formats for onward delivery. It is these efficiencies that the combination of Haivisions KulaByte encoders and HyperStream cloud transcoders deliver.

About Haivision Haivision delivers advanced technology for streaming, recording, managing, and distributing secure IP video and interactive media within the enterprise, education, medical/healthcare, and federal/military markets. Haivision is a private company based in Montreal and Chicago, with technical excellence centers in Beaverton, Ore.; Austin, Texas; and Hamburg, Germany. With a global sales and support organization, Haivision distributes its products through value-added resellers, system integrators, distributors, and OEMs worldwide.

Copyright 2011 Haivision Network Video. All rights reserved. The Haivision logo, Furnace, Mako, Makito, Barracuda, Piranha, Stingray, InStream, Torpedo, and CoolSign are trademarks of Haivision Network Video. Other trademarks identified in this document are the property of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice.