This is the format to define how the three components (Y,U, V or R, G, B) are sampled,  including :

• YUV 4:4:4: Y, U and V are all in sampling format, no being down-sampled

• YUV 4:2:2: Y is in full sampling format, while U and V are down-sampled horizontally

• YUV 4:2:0: Y is in full sampling format, while U and V are down-sampled both vertically and horizontally

• RGB 4:4:4: R, G and B are all in sampling format, no being down-sampled

   

    

This is to define whether the video frame (the whole image) is a single progressive frame, or two interlaced fields

• One single progressive frame:

• Two interlaced fields:

This setting is used to specify the organization of YUV components for each pixel, whether in planar format or packed format:

• planar format: Y values for all pixels are put together, as well as U and V, like: YYYYYY......UUUUUUU.......VVVVVV......

• packed format: pixel YUV value are packed together as: YUV, YUV, YUV,....

We support several pre-defined resolutions (QCIF, CIF, 4CIF.. etc) and customized resolution:

• QCIF_NTSC:176x120
• QCIF_PAL:176x144
• CIF_NTSC:352x240
• CIF_PAL:352x288
• 4CIF_NTSC:704x480
• 4CIF_PAL:704x576
• D1_NTSC:720x480
• D1_PAL:720x576
• VGA:640x480
• SVGA:800x600
• XGA:1024x768
• SXGA:1280x1024
• UXGA:1600x1200
• 720HD:1280x720
• 1080HD:1920x1080
• Customized: user specified image height and width.

Resolution setting only effects image size, while other four settings will define the data structure of each YUV file. So, we consider only four different sampling formats. The combination of sampling format (3 formats), component order (2 or 3 formats), interlace/progressive format (2 formats) and pixel packing format (2 formats) will generate 30 formats:

RGB 4:4:4 format:

1. RGB-444-progressive-packed;
2. RGB-444-progressive-planar;
3. BGR-444-progressive-packed;
4. BGR-444-progressive-planar;

   YUV 4:4:4 format:

5. YUV-444-interlaced-packed;
6. YUV-444-interlaced-planar;
7. YUV-444-progressive-packed;
8. YUV-444-progressive-planar;
9. YVU-444-interlaced-packed;
10. YVU-444-interlaced-planar;
11. YVU-444-progressive-packed;
12. YVU-444-progressive-planar;
13. UYV-444-interlaced-packed;
14. UYV-444-interlaced-planar;
15. UYV-444-progressive-packed;
16. UYV-444-progressive-planar;

    YUV 4:2:2 format:

17. YUYV-422-interlaced-packed;
18. YUV-422-interlaced-planar (YV16);
19. YUYV-422-progressive-packed (YUY2, YUNV, V422, YUYV);
20. YUY-422-progressive-planar;
21. UYVY-422-interlaced-packed (IUYV);
22. UYVY-422-progressive-packed (UYVY, UYNV, Y422 );
23. YVYU-422-interlaced-packed;
24. YVU-422-interlaced-planar;
25. YVYU-422-progressive-packed (YVYU);
26. YVU-422-progressive-planar;

    YUV 4:2:0 format:

27. YUV-420-interlaced-planar;
28. YUV-420-progressive-planar (IYUV, I420);
29. YVU-420-interlaced-planar (YV12);
30. YVU-420-progressive-planar;

There are many variations of formula to convert between YUV and RGB. We support two types of conversion:

* ITU-R 601 for SDTV:

   RGB to YUV Conversion:

      Y = (0.257 * R) + (0.504 * G) + (0.098 * B) + 16
      U = -(0.148 * R) - (0.291 * G) + (0.439 * B) + 128
      V = (0.439 * R) - (0.368 * G) - (0.071 * B) + 128

   YUV to RGB Conversion:

      B = 1.164(Y - 16) + 2.018(U - 128)
      G = 1.164(Y - 16) - 0.813(V - 128) - 0.391(U - 128)
      R = 1.164(Y - 16) + 1.596(V - 128)

* ITU-R 709 for HDTV:

   RGB to YUV Conversion:

      Y = (0.183 * R) + (0.614 * G) + (0.062 * B) + 16
      U = -(0.101 * R) - (0.338 * G) + (0.439 * B) + 128
      V = (0.439 * R) - (0.399 * G) - (0.040 * B) + 128

   YUV to RGB Conversion:

      B = 1.164(Y - 16) + 1.793(U - 128)
      G = 1.164(Y - 16) - 0.534(V - 128) - 0.213(U - 128)
      R = 1.164(Y - 16) + 2.115(V - 128)

The video coding libraries (H.263, MPEG2, MPEG4) only accept video elementary stream, which already demultiplexed from any container format (AVI, MPEG2 System, MP4, etc).

Yes.

H.263+ adds more coding tools ( called annex ) on top of H.263. H.263 decoder in VIC Libraries only supports H.263, not include those annexes.

First, when you use open source code, you may need to open your own code back to the open source community; second, open-source library intends to build on other third party libraries, or is very big by itself, and all modules are tangled together. It is hard to extract one or two codec. Even when you only need one or two codec, you have to include all of them.