SVC: Which web video players support scalable video coding?

Question

Scalable Video Coding is supported by Annex G of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard.

My question is if there are any web video players (e.g., Adobe Flash Player) supporting Scalable Video Coding, and if so, which ones.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the number of video players that support scalable video coding is very limited (if not even 0). The only thing I know that exists is OpenSVC Decoder [1], though I haven't managed to get that running. Instead, I have been using the JSVM Reference Software [2]. The main issue with SVC is that there are no hardware-decoders available in ordinary Computers...

One thing to keep in mind though, is the following: The SVC Base Layer is AVC compatible, and using ffmpeg you can squeeze the base layer into another packet format (e.g., .mp4), therefore you are able to play it with most web browsers.

Another thing, and I haven't tested this yet, but by playing with temporal scalability of the base layer one SHOULD also be able to create a legacy AVC decodeable stream.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensvcdecoder/

[2] http://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/de/kompetenzfelder/image-processing/research-groups/image-video-coding/svc-extension-of-h264avc/jsvm-reference-software.html