What is the relationship between MJPEG and H.264/H.265 regarding latency?

MJPEG, or Motion JPEG, typically has lower latency compared to H.264 and H.265 codecs. This is primarily due to the way MJPEG encodes video. MJPEG compresses each frame individually as a JPEG image, which allows for quicker access and playback since there is no need for the algorithm to analyze multiple frames in order to compress or decompress a single one.

With H.264 and H.265, both of which employ more complex compression techniques and inter-frame dependencies (i.e., they store information only about changes between frames), the processing time is generally longer. This means that decoding a frame often requires additional data from previous and/or future frames, which introduces delays.

Thus, MJPEG's method of treating each frame as an independent image results in significantly lower latency, making it more suitable for applications where real-time viewing is critical. In contrast, H.264 and H.265 aim for higher compression efficiency but, at the expense of latency, as they require more computational power and time to process the data effectively.