Bhatia, Tarun2007-08-232011-08-242007-08-232011-08-242007-08-23November 2http://hdl.handle.net/10106/420H.264 is an emerging video coding standard, which aims at compressing high-quality video content at low-bit rates. While the basic idea behind the encoding and decoding process still remains the same as in the previous standards, many new and innovative tools have been added to provide higher compression capabilities with high perceptual quality. These capabilities have also contributed to the increase in complexity of implementation of H.264 significantly compared to the previous generation of video coding standards. In this thesis, the performance analysis of the H.264 decoder for decoding of high profile high definition data is done for the Pentium 4 processor and accordingly the optimization techniques based on single instruction multiple data and Windows based multithreading have been implemented. The comparison of optimized version of the H.264 decoder with the non-optimized version shows significant speed improvements after optimization thus making a contribution to the implementation of real-time decoding of high definition data encoded using H.264 high profile encoder.ENM.S.