H.264 profiles and levels (Stanley posted on April 28th, 2008 )

H.264 Profiles

The standard includes the following seven sets of capabilities, which are referred to as profiles, targeting specific classes of applications:

  • Baseline Profile (BP): Primarily for lower-cost applications with limited computing resources, this profile is used widely in videoconferencing and mobile applications.
  • Main Profile (MP): Originally intended as the mainstream consumer profile for broadcast and storage applications, the importance of this profile faded when the High profile was developed for those applications.
  • Extended Profile (XP): Intended as the streaming video profile, this profile has relatively high compression capability and some extra tricks for robustness to data losses and server stream switching.
  • High Profile (HiP): The primary profile for broadcast and disc storage applications, particularly for high-definition television applications (this is the profile adopted into HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc, for example).
  • High 10 Profile (Hi10P): Going beyond today’s mainstream consumer product capabilities, this profile builds on top of the High Profile—adding support for up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
  • High 4:2:2 Profile (Hi422P): Primarily targeting professional applications that use interlaced video, this profile builds on top of the High 10 Profile—adding support for the 4:2:2 chroma subsampling format while using up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
  • High 4:4:4 Predictive Profile (Hi444PP): This profile builds on top of the High 4:2:2 Profile—supporting up to 4:4:4 chroma sampling, up to 14 bits per sample, and additionally supporting efficient lossless region coding and the coding of each picture as three separate color planes.

In addition, the standard contains four additional all-Intra profiles, which are defined as simple subsets of other corresponding profiles. These are mostly for professional (e.g., camera and editing system) applications:

  • High 10 Intra Profile: The High 10 Profile constrained to all-Intra use.
  • High 4:2:2 Intra Profile: The High 4:2:2 Profile constrained to all-Intra use.
  • High 4:4:4 Intra Profile: The High 4:4:4 Profile constrained to all-Intra use.
  • CAVLC 4:4:4 Intra Profile: The High 4:4:4 Profile constrained to all-Intra use and to CAVLC entropy coding (i.e., not supporting CABAC).

As a result of the Scalable Video Coding extension, the standard contains three additional scalable profiles, which are defined as a combination of the H.264/AVC profile for the base layer (2nd word in scalable profile name) and tools that achieve the scalable extension:

  • Scalable Baseline Profile: Primarily targeting video conferencing, mobile, and surveillance applications, this profile builds on top of a constrained version of the H.264/AVC Baseline profile to which the base layer (a subset of the bitstream) must conform. For the scalability tools, a subset of the available tools is enabled.
  • Scalable High Profile: Primarily targeting broadcast and streaming applications, this profile builds on top of the H.264/AVC High Profile to which the base layer must conform.
  • Scalable High Intra Profile: Primarily targeting production applications, this profile is the Scalable High Profile constrained to all-Intra use.
Baseline Extended Main High High 10 High 4:2:2 High 4:4:4Predictive
I and P Slices Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
B Slices No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SI and SP Slices No Yes No No No No No
Multiple Reference Frames Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
In-Loop Deblocking Filter Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CAVLC Entropy Coding Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
CABAC Entropy Coding No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) Yes Yes No No No No No
Arbitrary Slice Ordering (ASO) Yes Yes No No No No No
Redundant Slices (RS) Yes Yes No No No No No
Data Partitioning No Yes No No No No No
Interlaced Coding (PicAFF, MBAFF) No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
4:2:0 Chroma Format Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Monochrome Video Format (4:0:0) No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
4:2:2 Chroma Format No No No No No Yes Yes
4:4:4 Chroma Format No No No No No No Yes
8 Bit Sample Depth Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
9 and 10 Bit Sample Depth No No No No Yes Yes Yes
11 to 14 Bit Sample Depth No No No No No No Yes
8×8 vs. 4×4 Transform Adaptivity No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Quantization Scaling Matrices No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Separate Cb and Cr QP control No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Separate Color Plane Coding No No No No No No Yes
Predictive Lossless Coding No No No No No No Yes
Baseline Extended Main High High 10 High 4:2:2 High 4:4:4Predictive

H.264 Levels

Level number Max macroblocks per second Max frame size (macroblocks) Max video bit rate (VCL) for Baseline, Extended and Main Profiles Max video bit rate (VCL) for High Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 10 Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Predictive Profiles Examples for high resolution @
frame rate
(max stored frames)
in Level
1 1485 99 64 kbit/s 80 kbit/s 192 kbit/s 256 kbit/s 128×96@30.9 (8)
176×144@15.0 (4)
1b 1485 99 128 kbit/s 160 kbit/s 384 kbit/s 512 kbit/s 128×96@30.9 (8)
176×144@15.0 (4)
1.1 3000 396 192 kbit/s 240 kbit/s 576 kbit/s 768 kbit/s 176×144@30.3 (9)
320×240@10.0 (3)
352×288@7.5 (2)
1.2 6000 396 384 kbit/s 480 kbit/s 1152 kbit/s 1536 kbit/s 320×240@20.0 (7)
352×288@15.2 (6)
1.3 11880 396 768 kbit/s 960 kbit/s 2304 kbit/s 3072 kbit/s 320×240@36.0 (7)
352×288@30.0 (6)
2 11880 396 2 Mbit/s 2.5 Mbit/s 6 Mbit/s 8 Mbit/s 320×240@36.0 (7)
352×288@30.0 (6)
2.1 19800 792 4 Mbit/s 5 Mbit/s 12 Mbit/s 16 Mbit/s 352×480@30.0 (7)
352×576@25.0 (6)
2.2 20250 1620 4 Mbit/s 5 Mbit/s 12 Mbit/s 16 Mbit/s 352×480@30.7(10)
352×576@25.6 (7)
720×480@15.0 (6)
720×576@12.5 (5)
3 40500 1620 10 Mbit/s 12.5 Mbit/s 30 Mbit/s 40 Mbit/s 352×480@61.4 (12)
352×576@51.1 (10)
720×480@30.0 (6)
720×576@25.0 (5)
3.1 108000 3600 14 Mbit/s 17.5 Mbit/s 42 Mbit/s 56 Mbit/s 720×480@80.0 (13)
720×576@66.7 (11)
1280×720@30.0 (5)
3.2 216000 5120 20 Mbit/s 25 Mbit/s 60 Mbit/s 80 Mbit/s 1280×720@60.0 (5)
1280×1024@42.2 (4)
4 245760 8192 20 Mbit/s 25 Mbit/s 60 Mbit/s 80 Mbit/s 1280×720@68.3 (9)
1920×1088@30.1 (4)
2048×1024@30.0 (4)
4.1 245760 8192 50 Mbit/s 50 Mbit/s 150 Mbit/s 200 Mbit/s 1280×720@68.3 (9)
1920×1088@30.1 (4)
2048×1024@30.0 (4)
4.2 522240 8704 50 Mbit/s 50 Mbit/s 150 Mbit/s 200 Mbit/s 1920×1088@64.0 (4)
2048×1088@60.0 (4)
5 589824 22080 135 Mbit/s 168.75 Mbit/s 405 Mbit/s 540 Mbit/s 1920×1088@72.3 (13)
2048×1024@72.0 (13)
2048×1088@67.8 (12)
2560×1920@30.7 (5)
3680×1536/26.7 (5)
5.1 983040 36864 240 Mbit/s 300 Mbit/s 720 Mbit/s 960 Mbit/s 1920×1088@120.5 (16)
4096×2048@30.0 (5)
4096×2304@26.7 (5)
Level number Max macroblocks per second Max frame size (macroblocks) Max video bit rate (VCL) for Baseline, Extended and Main Profiles Max video bit rate (VCL) for High Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 10 Profile Max video bit rate (VCL) for High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Predictive Profiles

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