Indeo 3

• FourCC: IV31, IV32
• Company: Intel, Ligos
• Technical Description: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~timf/videocodec/indeo3.txt (mirrored)
• Samples: http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/V-codecs/IV32/
• Partial specification: http://multimedia.cx/mirror/5386232.pdf

Introduction

Indeo Video 3 is a proprietary video compression algorithm developed by Intel. It is primarily used to encode video in AVI files. The format was commonly seen around the time of 1996 and has since been superseded by Indeo Video Interactive version 4 and 5 (see Indeo 4 and Indeo 5). There are many versions of this codec (R3.1, R3.2) but the version R3.2 (FOURCC 'IV32') is the most common. There is a support for this codec for all major platforms (Windows, Macintosh, Linux).

This document focuses on principles necessary to implement an Indeo Video 3 decoder.

Decoder specification

Coding techniques

Indeo Video 3 employs color subsampling, differential coding, vector quantization, run-lenght coding and motion compensation to achieve its compression.