Introduction

The generic mapping of MPEG streams into MXF is standardized in SMPTE 381M. The basic assumption behind the document is that many people have worked very hard within the MPEG community to create a set of standards that allow compressed content to be streamed and transported. SMPTE 381M reuses the concepts and some of the identifiers created by MPEG. This chapter will review some of the basic concepts within MPEG and how they are used in MPEG mapping document SMPTE 381M. Samples of MPEG MXF files can be found at http://www.the mxfbook. com/ .

MPEG Basics

MPEG is most commonly associated with compression for television and DVDs. This form of MPEG coding is called long-GOP MPEG-2. This compression scheme was created in the early 1990s for video compression and forms one part of the MPEG suite of standards. There are many books that cover MPEG compression very well, and this short review only covers those aspects of MPEG that are important for the mapping into the MXF Generic Container.

The MPEG specification comprises a number of different documents: