Benchmark the software based MPEG-4 video codec

Software-based implementations of H.263 and MPEG-2 video standards are well documented, recently reporting faster than or close to real-time performance. Since the complexity of MPEG-4 is higher than its predecessor standards, real time video encoding and decoding can exhaust computational resource without achieving real-time speed. In this paper, we report a software-based real-time MPEG-4 video codec (encoder and decoder) on a single-processor PC, with no frame-skip, or profile simplifying tricks, or quality loss compromise. The proposed codec is an embodiment of a number of novel algorithms. Specifically, we have designed a fast binary shape coding algorithm, a fast motion estimation algorithm, and a technique for detection of all-zero quantized blocks. To enhance the computation speed, we harness Intel´s SIMD (Single Instruction Stream, Multiple Data Stream) instructions to implement these algorithms. On the 800 MHz Intel Pentium III, our decoder can play real-time CIF video with less than 20% system resource consumption; and our encoder realizes up to 70 frames per second for CIF resolution video, with the similar picture quality as the reference software