Interesting introduction. Too bad it doesn't really get into some of the more complicated things an advanced H.264 encoder like x264 is doing, e.g. adaptive quantization methods. There's also a mistake or two, for example
> P-frames are frames that will encode a motion vector for each of the macro-blocks from the previous frame.
Actually, P-frames can use data from multiple previous frames, not just the last one.
I think it's worth pointing out, as well, that even though we've technically surpassed H.264 with newer codecs like H.265, VP9, and AV1, all of which are roughly 20%-50% more efficient, this has required tremendous increases in encoding complexity. H.264 is special - it seems to occupy a kind of inflection point on the complexity / efficiency curve. It's far more efficient than previous codecs like Xvid, WMV, and so on, but at the same time even a lot of underpowered devices from over a decade ago can easily play it. We're not likely to see tradeoffs that good again in the video codec space.
> P-frames are frames that will encode a motion vector for each of the macro-blocks from the previous frame.
Actually, P-frames can use data from multiple previous frames, not just the last one.
I think it's worth pointing out, as well, that even though we've technically surpassed H.264 with newer codecs like H.265, VP9, and AV1, all of which are roughly 20%-50% more efficient, this has required tremendous increases in encoding complexity. H.264 is special - it seems to occupy a kind of inflection point on the complexity / efficiency curve. It's far more efficient than previous codecs like Xvid, WMV, and so on, but at the same time even a lot of underpowered devices from over a decade ago can easily play it. We're not likely to see tradeoffs that good again in the video codec space.