Annex B is a format for specifying how NALUs can be combined together in a stream.
This is because a NALU itself does not contain the size of its payload, so simply placing them one after another as a stream will not work as we won’t know when individual NALUs end [1].
Annex B specifies start codes which are added to start of every NAL, which is in the form of either:
- Two consecutive zero bytes followed by
0x01i.e.[0x00_00_01] - Three consecutive zero bytes followed by
0x01i.e.[0x00_00_00_01]
So we can use an Annex B stream for transmitting several NALUs together.
Escaping in payload
In programming, we encounter situations where we have to add a quote inside a string literal e.g. python.
my_string = 'I'm kewl' # invalid because the second quote ended the string
my_string_escaped = 'I\'m kewl'We wanted to add a quote inside the string, but the quote also acts as the start/end of the string, so we escape the inner quote to tell that this is part of the string, and not a start/end quote.
Similarly, it is possible to have bytes like 0x00_00_01 or 0x00_00_00_01 inside the payload, which is actually part of the payload and not a start code, and there is a defined way of escaping them called Emulation Prevention.