Summary

Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 | International Standard ISO/IEC 14496-4 specifies tests designed to verify whether bitstreams and decoders meet the normative requirements specified in Rec. ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10:

•       An encoder can claim conformance to Rec. ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10 if the bitstreams that it generates are conforming bitstreams.

•       A decoder can claim conformance to a specified profile and level of Rec. ITU-T H.264 if it can properly decode all bitstreams obeying constraints specified in Rec. ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10.

The tests specified in this Recommendation provide methods for (non-exhaustive) testing of whether encoders and decoders meet these requirements.

This twin text with ISO/IEC has been jointly developed in the context of the ITU-T/ISO/IEC Joint Video Team (JVT) and has been submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG) as ISO/IEC 14496‑4:2002/Amendment 6 (2005 E), ISO/IEC 14496‑4:2004/Amendment 9, ISO/IEC 14496‑4:2004/Amendment 30, ISO/IEC 14496‑4:2004/Amendment 31, and ISO/IEC 14496‑4:2004/Amendment 38.

The first approved version of Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 (03/2005) included the specification of bitstreams for the testing of decoders for conformance to the Baseline, Extended, Main, High, High 10, and High 4:2:2 profiles specified in Rec. ITU‑T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496‑10.

Corrigendum 1 to Recommendation H.264.1 (09/2005), which was integrated into the first published edition of Rec. ITU‑T H.264.1, provided improved synchronization with the technically-aligned twin text in ISO/IEC, removed some errors, and added tests for some required features that were not tested in the previous version.

The second edition of Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 (06/2008) provided corrections relative to the previous version of Rec. ITU-T H.264.1 and added additional bitstreams for the testing of decoders for conformance to the High 4:4:4 Predictive, High 10 Intra, High 4:2:2 Intra, High 4:4:4 Intra, and CAVLC 4:4:4 Intra profiles specified in Rec. ITU‑T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496‑10.

The third edition of Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 (04/2010) adds additional bitstreams for the testing of decoders for conformance to the Constrained Baseline, Scalable Baseline, Scalable High, Scalable High Intra, Multiview High, and Stereo High profiles specified in Rec. ITU‑T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496‑10. Some of these added bitstreams are also specified for the testing of decoders for conformance to the previously-existing profiles.

The fourth edition of Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 (01/2012) corrects minor errors in the bitstreams and associated text specification.

The fifth edition of Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 (10/2014) adds additional bitstreams for the testing of decoders for conformance to the Multiview Depth High and MFC (Multi-resolution Frame Compatible) High profiles specified in Rec. ITU‑T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496‑10).

The conformance bitstreams identified in Recommendation ITU-T H.264.1 are available as an electronic attachment to this Recommendation and can be downloaded from the ITU-T Test Signal Database at http://itu.int/net/ITU-T/sigdb/spevideo/Hseries-s.htm#H.264.1.