J. Ruiz-Shulcloper and W.G. Kropatsch (Eds.): CIARP 2008, LNCS 5197, pp. 741–748, 2008. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008 Joint Coding of Multiple H.264 Video Programs Luís Teixeira 1 and Luís Corte-Real 2 1 Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, R. Diogo Botelho 1327, 4169 005 Porto, Portugal lmt@porto.ucp.pt 2 FE.UP / INESC Porto, R. Roberto Frias, 4250 005 Porto, Portugal lreal@inescporto.pt Abstract. This paper presents a joint coding scheme for multiple H.264/AVC video programs. Channel bandwidth is divided among different programs ac- cording its complexity. Several complexity metrics are assessed. Initial results are presented and discussed. Keywords: Joint Coding, video quality, H.264. 1 Introduction Video services, such as digital television, video on demand, Internet video, are been offered by a broad range of video content suppliers. Each service can contain several programs. By a program we refer to one or more bit streams that are used to represent the video content and associated audio content. The diffusion of the video services over data communications and broadcasting networks requires considerable substan- tial bandwidth. Examples of broadcasting system varies from packet-switched data communication networks to streaming broadcast networks including IP-based (Internet Protocol) networks such as the Internet, cellular networks, DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast- Handheld), DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestrial), DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcast-Satellite), DVB-S2 (Digital Video Broadcast-Satellite, specification March 2005), and DVB-C (Digital Video Broadcast-Cable) broadcasting networks. The bandwidth required to broadcast an individual video program with high- quality depends on the nature of the contents and it varies in time. As an example, football or basketball compressed programs typically need more bandwidth than news programs for the same equivalent subjective quality. Traditional encoding systems allocate constant values for the bandwidth to each program; thus content providers have to careful chosen between bandwidth and pro- gram quality. This problem is one of the main constrains in systems such as wireless transmission and broadcasting systems. A joint coding system can dynamically allo- cate the available bandwidth among the different programs in an optimum way. This process reduces the mean data rate for each program. The H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding standard (H.264/AVC) [1] has accomplished a considerable progress regarding coding efficiency, substantially