TABLE OF CONTENTS A few short years ago, the applications for video were somewhat confined analog was used for broadcast and cable television, VCRs, set-top boxes, televisions and camcorders. Since then, there has been a tremendous and rapid conversion to digital video, mostly based on the MPEG-2 video compression standard.
Today, in addition to the legacy DV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 audio and video compression standards, there are three new high-performance video compression standards. These new video codecs offer much higher video compression for a given level of video quality.
MPEG-4. This video codec typically offers a 1.5 2 improvement in compression ratio over MPEG-2. Able to address a wide variety of markets, MPEG-4 never really achieved widespread acceptance due to its complexity. Also, many simply decided to wait for the new H.264 video codec to become available.
H.264. Also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, this video codec typically offers a 2 3 improvement in compression ratio over MPEG-2. Additional improvements in compression ratios and quality are expected as the encoders become better and use more of the available tools that H.264 offers. Learning a lesson from MPEG-4, H.264 is optimized for implementing on low-cost single-chip solutions.
SMPTE VC-9 (Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 or WMV9). A competitor to H.264, this video codec also typically offers a 2 3 improvement in compression ratios over MPEG-2. Again, additional improvements in compression ratios and quality are expected as the encoders become better.
Many more audio codecs are also available as a result of the interest in 6.1- and 7.1-channel...
