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In this paper, an investigation of H.264/MPEG4-AVC conforming coding with hierarchical B pictures is presented. We analyze the coding delay and memory requirements, describe details of an improved encoder control, and compare the coding efficiency for different coding delays. Additionally, the coding efficiency of hierarchical B picture coding is compared to that of MCTF-based coding by using identical coding structures and a similar degree of encoder optimization. Our simulation results turned out that in comparison to the widely used IBBP...structure coding gains of more than 1 dB can be achieved at the expense of an increased coding delay. Further experiments have shown that the coding efficiency gains obtained by using the additional update steps in MCTF coding are generally smaller than the losses resulting from the required open-loop encoder control