H.264 codec explained

Question

I am making a app which supports video calls and I am looking for a tutorial/doc explaining the structure of the h.264 codec. I want to be able to package the stream, wrap it in datagrams, send and unpack on the receiving side.

Any suggestions/reading materials?

Solution 1

What do you mean by structure? If you are talking about the bitstream syntax, you can download the H.264 standard for free. There are also many books/papers about H.264 such as the one by Iain Richardson.

If you are more interested in the network transport of H.264 over IP, why don't you use the RTP standard and associated payload format?

Solution 2

Have a look at x264 which is an existing implementation of the codec. You might even want to consider using that codec rather than implementing AVC from scratch.