Digital Media Do More

Already in 1991, when MPEG-1 was maturing and the definition of MPEG-2 was rapidly progressing, I had begun to wonder whether there was a scope for work beyond what had been started in 1988, i.e. coding of audio and video for “high” bitrate applications, i.e. above 1 Mbit/s. I triggered…

Cliff Reader, who had joined Samsung after leaving Cypress, was appointed as chair of a new AHG with the task of identifying applications and requirements of the new project that had already been christened MPEG-4, before the early dismissal of the MPEG-3 project in July 1992. At the following meeting…

Many papers and books explain the MPEG-4 standard using the figure below, originally contributed by Phil Chou, then with Xerox PARC. This page will be no different :-). We will use the case of a publisher of technical courses who expects to do a better job by using MPEG-4 as…

MPEG-4 Visual provides a coding algorithm for natural video that is capable of operating from 5 kbit/s with a spatial resolution of QCIF (144×176 pixels) scaling up to bitrates of some Mbit/s for ITU-R 601 resolution pictures (288×720@50Hz and 240×720@59.94 Hz). Additionally the Studio Profile addresses an operation range in…

MPEG-4 Audio provides complete coverage of the bitrate range of 2 to 64 kbit/s. Good coded speech is obtained already at 2 kbit/s and transparent quality of monophonic music sampled at 48 kHz and 16 bits/sample is obtained at 64 kbit/s. Three classes of algorithms are used in the standard.…

The MPEG File Format has been designed to satisfy a set of requirements, some of which are listed below Binary assets Hierarchical structure Backward- & forward-compatible Suitable to hold timed content Suitable to exchange content Self-contained (only contain data to be exchanged or all of them) Content can extend on…

During the development of MPEG-4, several liaison statements were sent to ITU-T suggesting to work together on the new MPEG-4 Visual standard and even on the MPEG-4 Audio standard, specifically on the speech coding part. As no responses were received to these offers MPEG continued the development of MPEG-4 alone. For…

At the MPEG Vancouver meeting in July 1999 it was realised that, while interest in MPEG-4 remained high and diffuse, apparently there was no industry or company that was willing to take on the role that Cable Labs had taken for MPEG-2, a result of the truly generic nature of…