From Aachen to Austin: Digital Video Technology Decoded (and Encoded)

No matter where you are in the modern world, digital video is most likely in every one of your spaces (and if it is not, you are probably carrying it in your pocket by way of a smart phone). What does it take to record, encode, decode, edit and deliver digital video assets and virtual experiences—from live concerts to breaking news stories to sports events as well as surveillance footage and digital medical records? The short answer is a whole lot of talent and technology.

While I’m based in Austin, Texas, our global team is distributed around the world. Many of my colleagues are in Aachen, Germany—where MainConcept® was founded in 1993—while others can be found across the US as well as Japan and our engineering hub in Tomsk, Russia. With decades of experience in the field, our product management, engineering and support teams are extremely knowledgeable and, lucky for me, all quite willing to answer my questions. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a bit about what I’ve learned since joining MainConcept (and to spread the joy of a plethora of acronyms).

Video used to be stored on magnetic tape as an analog signal. However, in the mid-1970s, DCT (discrete cosine transform) compression was introduced. About 15 years later, multiple companies started experimenting with DCT lossy compression, including heavy hitters such as Toshiba, Hitachi, NTT, and BT. DCT compression was at the heart of the H.261 standard ratified in 1988 (compliments of the ITU or International Telecommunications Union). This paved the way for the many video coding standards that have followed over the past four decades.

Some of these video coding standards have become popular and are still used, while others have faded into history as what we refer to as “legacy codecs.” (And, while those legacy codecs may not seem important, MainConcept maintains the largest codec library in the world to ensure that our customers still have access to them if they need them). In all of this, one thing is crystal clear: the field of codec technology is constantly evolving and will remain as ever-changing as the methods for creating and the devices that deliver the content.

Today, two of the most popular codecs are AVC/H.264 and HEVC/H.265.

AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is an ideal choice for compatibility with almost any video device or service and provides superior visual quality. It is often used for OTT (over-the-top) streaming and broadcast and AVC is the backbone of video production workflows with formats like XAVC from Sony, AVC Ultra from Panasonic and others.

HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) is also known as MPEG-H Part 2. It provides better compression than AVC and is the next-generation video codec of choice. It is used by many top companies to power their software offerings and is widely deployed across streaming and broadcast use cases.

MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) is a joint venture between the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). Their mission is to set standards for various types of media coding, including audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information coding. The standards that have come out of the MPEG initiative have wielded significant influence over the past few decades, and they show no signs of slowing down.