H.264/AVC is the latest international video coding standard, which provides a compression efficiency of up to 50% over a wide range of bit rates and video resolutions compared to previous standards. However, due to its high complexity, a full-software H.264/AVC codec possibly consumes all the resources of an embedded processor. This reduces its attractiveness or even makes it impractical for embedded applications. Therefore, a H.264/AVC codec implemented partially or fully in hardware would definitely be a more practical solution.