The Video Buffering Verifier (VBV) is a theoretical

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

video buffer model, used to ensure that an encoded video stream can be correctly buffered, and played back at the decoder device. By definition, the VBV shall not overflow nor underflow when its input is a compliant stream, (except in the case of low_delay). It is therefore important when encoding such a stream that it comply with the VBV requirements. One way to think of the VBV is to consider both a maximum bitrate and a maximum buffer size. You'll need to know how quickly the video data is coming into the buffer. Keep in mind that video data is always changing the bitrate so there is no constant number to note how fast the data is arriving. The larger question is how long before the buffer overflows. A larger buffer size simply means that the decoder will tolerate high bitrates for longer periods of time, but no buffer is infinite, so eventually even a large buffer will overflow.

Operation Modes

There are two operational modes of VBV: ''

Constant Bit Rate Constant bitrate (CBR) is a term used in telecommunications, relating to the quality of service. Compare with variable bitrate. When referring to codecs, constant bit rate encoding means that the rate at which a codec's output data should be cons ...

'' (CBR) and ''

Variable Bit Rate Variable bitrate (VBR) is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. As opposed to constant bitrate (CBR), VBR files vary the amount of output data per time segment. VBR allows a ...

'' (VBR). In CBR, the decoder's buffer is filled over time at a constant data rate. In VBR, the buffer is filled at a non-constant rate. In both cases, data is removed from the buffer in varying chunks, depending on the actual size of the coded frames.

Standards

In the

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

and

VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...

standards, the VBV is replaced with generalized version called ''Hypothetical Reference Decoder'' (HRD).

References

MPEG Tutorial - Video Buffering Verifier
Film and video technology MPEG {{Compu-stub