CASE STUDY

NAME : TANMAY MEHTA

COURSE : MBA TECH

BRANCH : TELECOM

ROLL NO : 527

PREFACE

The acronym MPEG stands for Moving Picture Expert Group, which worked to generate the specifications under ISO, the International Organization for Standardization and IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission. What is commonly referred to as "MPEG video" actually consists at the present time of two finalized standards, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, with a third standard, MPEG-4, in the process of being finalized . The MPEG-1 & -2 standards are similar in basic concepts. They both are based on motion compensated blockbased transform coding techniques, while MPEG-4 deviates from these more traditional approaches in its usage of software image construct descriptors, for target bit-rates in the very low range, < 64Kb/sec. Because MPEG-1 & -2 are finalized standards and are both presently being utilized in a large number of applications, this case study concentrates on compression techniques relating only to these two standards. MPEG 3- it was originally anticipated that this standard would refer to HDTV applications, but it was found that minor extensions to the MPEG-2 standard would suffice for this higher bitrate, higher resolution application, so work on a separate MPEG-3 standard was abandoned.

CONTENTS

*Introduction

*History *Video Compression *Video Quality *MPEG *MPEG Standards *MPEG Video Compression Technology *MPEG Specification *System -Elementary Stream -System Clock Referance -Program Streams -Presentation Time Stamps -Decoding Time Stamps -Multiplexing

*Video -Resolution -Bitrate

-I frame -P frame -B frame -D frame -Macroblock -Motion Vectors

*Audio *Illustration 1 : 32 sub band filter bank *Illustration 2 : FFT analysis

*Discrete Cosine Transform

*Important Tables *Applications *Referances

INTRODUCTION

MPEG video compression is used in many current and emerging products. It is at the heart of digital television set-top boxes, DSS, HDTV decoders, DVD players, video conferencing, Internet video, and other applications. These applications benefit from video compression in the fact that they may require less storage space for archived video information, less bandwidth for the transmission of the video information from one point to another, or a combination of both. Besides the fact that it works well in a wide variety of applications, a large part of its popularity is that it is defined in two finalized international standards, with a third standard currently in the definition process. It is the purpose of this case study to introduce to the basics of MPEG video compression, from both an encoding and a decoding perspective.

HISTORY

Modeled on the successful collaborative approach and the compression technologies developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group and CCITT's Experts Group on Telephony (creators of the JPEG image compression standard and the H.261 standard for video conferencing respectively) the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) working group was established in January 1988. MPEG was formed to address the need for standard video and audio formats, and build on H.261 to get better quality through the use of more complex encoding methods. Development of the MPEG-1 standard began in May 1988. 14 video and 14 audio codec proposals were submitted by individual companies and institutions for evaluation. The codecs were extensively tested for computational complexity and subjective (human perceived) quality, at data rates of 1.5 Mbit/s. This specific bitrate was chosen for transmission over T-1/E-1 lines and as the approximate data rate of audio CDs. The codecs that excelled in this testing were utilized as the basis for the standard and refined further, with additional features and other improvements being incorporated in the process.

After 20 meetings of the full group in various cities around the world, and 4 years of development and testing, the final standard (for parts 1-3) was approved in early November 1992 and published a few months later. The reported completion date of the MPEG-1 standard , varies greatly: a largely complete draft standard was produced in September 1990, and from that point on, only minor changes were introduced. The draft standard was publicly available for purchase. The standard was finished with the 6 November 1992 meeting. The Berkeley Plateau Multimedia Research Group developed a MPEG-1 decoder in November 1992. In July 1990, before the first draft of the MPEG-1 standard had even been written, work began on a second standard, MPEG-2,[ intended to extend MPEG-1 technology to provide full broadcastquality video (as per CCIR 601) at high bitrates (3 - 15 Mbit/s), and support for interlaced video. Due in part to the similarity between the two codecs , the MPEG-2 standard includes full backwards compatibility with MPEG-1 video, so any MPEG-2 decoder can play MPEG-1 videos. Notably, the MPEG-1 standard very strictly defines the bitstream , and decoder function, but does not define how MPEG-1 encoding is to be performed . This means that MPEG-1 coding efficiency can drastically vary depending on the encoder used, and generally means that newer encoders perform significantly better than their predecessors. The first three parts (Systems, Video and Audio) of ISO/IEC 11172 were published in August 1993.

VIDEO COMPRESSION
Video compression refers to reducing the quantity of data used to represent digital video images, and is a combination of spatial image compression and temporal motion compensation. Video compression is an example of the concept of source coding in Information theory. This case study deals with its applications: compressed video can effectively reduce the bandwidth required to transmit video via terrestrial broadcast, via cable TV, or via satellite TV services.

VIDEO QUALITY

Most video compression is lossy it operates on the premise that much of the data present before compression is not necessary for achieving good perceptual quality. For example, DVDs use a video coding standard called MPEG-2 that can compress around two hours of video data by 15 to 30 times, while still producing a picture quality that is generally considered high-quality for standard-definition video. Video compression is a trade off between disk space, video quality, and the cost of hardware required to decompress the video in a reasonable time. However, if the video is over compressed in a lossy manner, visible (and sometimes distracting) artifacts can appear.

Video compression typically operates on square-shaped groups of neighboring pixels, often called macroblocks. These pixel groups or blocks of pixels are compared from one frame to the next and the video compression codec (encode/decode scheme) sends only the differences within those blocks. This works extremely well if the video has no motion. A still frame of text, for example, can be repeated with very little transmitted data. In areas of video with more motion, more pixels change from one frame to the next. When more pixels change, the video compression scheme must send more data to keep up with the larger number of pixels that are changing.

VIDEO COMPRESSION TECHNOLOGY

At its most basic level, compression is performed when an input video stream is analyzed and information that is indiscernible to the viewer is discarded. Each event is then assigned a code - commonly occurring events are assigned few bits and rare events will have codes more bits. These steps are commonly called signal analysis, quantization and variable length encoding respectively. There are four methods for compression, discrete cosine transform (DCT), vector quantization (VQ), fractal compression, and discrete wavelet transform (DWT). Discrete cosine transform is a lossy compression algorithm that samples an image at regular intervals, analyzes the frequency components present in the sample, and discards those frequencies which do not affect the image as the human eye perceives it. DCT is the basis of standards such as JPEG, MPEG, H.261, and H.263. We covered the definition of both DCT and wavelets in our tutorial on Wavelets Theory.

Vector quantization is a lossy compression that looks at an array of data, instead of individual values. It can then generalize what it sees, compressing redundant data, while at the same time retaining the desired object or data stream's original intent.

Fractal compression is a form of VQ and is also a lossy compression. Compression is performed by locating self-similar sections of an image, then using a fractal algorithm to generate the sections.

Like DCT, discrete wavelet transform mathematically transforms an image into frequency components. The process is performed on the entire image, which differs from the other methods (DCT), that work on smaller pieces of the desired data. The result is a hierarchical representation of an image, where each layer represents a frequency band.

MPEG

MOVING PICTURE EXPERTS GROUP

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was formed by the ISO to set standards for audio and video compression and transmission. It was established in 1988 and its first meeting was in May 1988 in Ottawa, Canada. As of late 2005, MPEG has grown to include approximately 350 members per meeting from various industries, universities, and research institutions. MPEG's official designation is ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29 WG11 - Coding of moving pictures and audio .

STANDARDS

The MPEG standards consist of different Parts. Each part covers a certain aspect of the whole specification. The standards also specify Profiles and Levels. Profiles are intended to define a set of tools that are available, and Levels define the range of appropriate values for the properties associated with them. MPEG has standardized the following compression formats and ancillary standards:

MPEG-1 (1993): Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1.5 Mbit/s (ISO/IEC 11172). The first

MPEG compression standard for audio and video. It was basically designed to allow moving pictures and sound to be encoded into the bitrate of a Compact Disc. It is used on Video CD, SVCD and can be used for low-quality video on DVD Video. It was used in digital satellite/cable TV services before MPEG-2 became widespread. To meet the low bit requirement, MPEG-1 downsamples the images, as well as uses picture rates of only 2430 Hz, resulting in a moderate quality. It includes the popular Layer 3 (MP3) audio compression format.

MPEG-2 (1995): Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information. (ISO/IEC 13818) Transport, video and audio standards for broadcast-quality television. MPEG-2 standard was considerably broader in scope and of wider appeal supporting interlacing and high definition. MPEG-2 is considered important because it has been chosen as the compression scheme for over-the-air digital television ATSC, DVB and ISDB, digital satellite TV services like Dish Network, digital cable television signals, SVCD, DVD Video and Blu-ray. MPEG-3: MPEG-3 dealt with standardizing scalable and multiresolution compression and was intended for HDTV compression but was found to be redundant and was merged with MPEG-2, as a result there is no MPEG-3 standard. MPEG-3 is not to be confused with MP3, which is MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. MPEG-4 (1998): Coding of audio-visual objects. (ISO/IEC 14496) MPEG-4 uses further coding tools with additional complexity to achieve higher compression factors than MPEG-2. In addition to more efficient coding of video, MPEG-4 moves closer to computer graphics applications. In more complex profiles, the MPEG-4 decoder effectively becomes a rendering processor and the compressed bitstream describes three-dimensional shapes and surface texture. MPEG-4 also provides Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) which provides the facility to use proprietary technologies to manage and protect content like digital rights management. Several new higher-efficiency video standards (newer than MPEG-2 Video) are included

In addition, the following standards, while not sequential advances to the video encoding standard as with MPEG-1 through MPEG-4, are referred to by similar notation:

MPEG-7 (2002): Multimedia content description interface. (ISO/IEC 15938) MPEG-21 (2001): Multimedia framework (MPEG-21). (ISO/IEC 21000) MPEG describes this standard as a multimedia framework and provides for intellectual property management and protection.

Moreover, more recently than other standards above, MPEG has started following international standards; each of the standards holds multiple MPEG technologies for a way of application. (For example, MPEG-A includes a number of technologies on multimedia application format.)

MPEG-A (2007): Multimedia application format (MPEG-A). (ISO/IEC 23000) (e.g. Purpose for multimedia application formats, MPEG music player application format, MPEG photo player application format and others) MPEG-B (2006): MPEG systems technologies. (ISO/IEC 23001) (e.g. Binary MPEG format for XML, Fragment Request Units, Bitstream Syntax Description Language (BSDL) and others) MPEG-C (2006): MPEG video technologies. (ISO/IEC 23002) (e.g. Accuracy requirements for implementation of integer-output 8x8 inverse discrete cosine transform and others) MPEG-D (2007): MPEG audio technologies. (ISO/IEC 23003) (e.g. MPEG Surroundand two parts under development: SAOC-Spatial Audio

Object Coding and USAC-Unified Speech and Audio Coding)

MPEG-E (2007): Multimedia Middleware. (ISO/IEC 23004) (a.k.a. M3W) (e.g. Architecture, Multimedia application programming interface (API), Component model and others)

REFERANCES

-Elements Of Data Compression

ADAM DROZDEK

by

-Introduction To Data Compression KHALEED SYUOOD

by

-Wikipedia

-Encarta

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