The present document comprises a technical report on Video Codec Performance, for packet-switched video-capable multimedia services standardized by 3GPP.

The following documents contain provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of the present document.

• References are either specific (identified by date of publication, edition number, version number, etc.) or non-specific.
• For a specific reference, subsequent revisions do not apply.
• For a non-specific reference, the latest version applies. In the case of a reference to a 3GPP document (including a GSM document), a non-specific reference implicitly refers to the latest version of that document in the same Release as the present document.

For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply: APSNR AVC DCCH DPDCH DTCH HSPA IETF IMS IP MAC MBMS MSE MTSI NAL NSD PANSD PDU PDVD PSC PSNR PSS RFC RLC RTCP RTP SDP TTI UDP UE UTRAN

The present document is organized as discussed below.

• Clause 5 introduces the service scenarios, including their relationship with 3GPP services. Furthermore, it discusses the performance measurement metrics used in the present document.
• Clause 6 (performance figures) defines representative test cases and contains a listing, in the form of tables, performance of video codecs for each of the test cases.
• Clause 7 (supplementary information on figure generation) contains pointers to accompanying files containing video sequences, anchor bit streams, and error prone test bit streams. It also describes the mechanisms used to generate the anchor compressed video data, compressed video data exposed to typical error masks, and descriptions on the creation of error masks.
• Annex A sketches one possible environment that could be used by interested parties as a starting point for defining a process to assess the performances of a particular video codec against the performance figures.
• Annex B introduces details on the H.263 encoder and decoder configurations.
• Annex C introduces details of the H.264 encoder and decoder configurations
• Annex D introduces details on the usage of 3G file format in the present document.
• Annex E introduces details on the usage of RTPdump format in the present document.
• Annex F introduces details on the simulator, bearers, and dump files.
• Annex G introduces the details on the Quality Metric Evaluation.
• Annex H introduces the details on the Video Test Sequences.
• Annex I provides information on verification of appropriate use of the tools provided in this document.

Video transmission in a 3GPP packet-switched environment conceptually consists of an Encoder, one or more Channels, and a Decoder. The Encoder, as defined here, comprises the steps of the source coding and, when required by the service, the packetization into RTP packets, according to the relevant 3GPP Technical Specification for the service and media codec in question. The Channel, as defined here comprises all steps of conveying the information created by the Encoder to the Decoder. Note that the Channel, in some environments, may be prone to packet erasures, and in others it may be error free. In an erasure prone environment, it is not guarantied that all information created by the Encoder can be processed by the Decoder; implying that the Decoder needs to cope to some extent with compressed video data not compliant with the video codec standard. The Decoder, finally, de-packetizes and reconstructs the - potentially erasure prone and perhaps non-compliant - packet stream to a reconstructed video sequence. The only type of error considered at the depacketizer/decoder is RTP packet erasures.