My encounter with IT as a (business) tool for the AV world happened towards the end of the MPEG-2 development and was greatly enhanced by my participation in the DAVIC work. Of course until the time I was doing research myself, I had been a good IT user, but only…
Humans Interact With Machines
Devising methods to interact with machines and the very act of interacting with them are often endeavours with varying degrees of challenge. Playing a musical instrument may require years of practice, while setting the time on a mechanical wristwatch is rather straightforward. Doing the same on a digital wristwatch may…
Computers Create Pictures And Sound
Most of what has been said so far concerns audio and visual information generated in the real world and reaching human senses either directly or through a more or less transparent communication system. However, an increasing proportion of what we perceive today through communication devices is no longer generated in…
Internet
Today the word “Internet” have become part of everyone’s everyday vocabulary. So it is understandable that many people, with grounds or without, claim to have had a role in their development. I firmly claim to have had no role in the development of either. At the time I started MPEG,…
Media Meet Computers And Digital Networks
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…
MPEG-4 Development
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…
MPEG-4 Inside – Systems
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 Inside – Visual
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 Inside – Audio
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.…
MPEG-4 Inside – File Format
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…