A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression

The last few years have been an extraordinary time for the digital video industry. Not long before the turn of the millennium, digital video editing systems were expensive capital items of equipment that only major broadcasters and production companies could afford. To think that now the same capability is available in a laptop that you can buy off the shelf and it comes with the software for something in the region of $1200 is amazing. This is a capability we have dreamed about having on our desktops for 15 years. The price of the hardware and software needed to run an entire TV broadcast service is now within the reach of any organization or individual who cares to get involved.

Recall the boom in publishing that happened when the Apple LaserWriter was launched with Adobe PostScript contained inside and those early page composition programs enhanced what we were able to do with Word version 1 or MacWrite. We are now at that place with digital media and while some people will create an unattractive mess with these powerful tools, they will also enjoy themselves immensely and learn a lot at the same time. Eventually, a few skilled people will emerge from the pack and this is where the next generation of new talent will come from to drive the TV and film industry forward over the next couple of decades.

We excel through the efforts of those around us in our day-to-day interactions with them. I have been particularly lucky to enjoy a few truly inspirational years with a group of like-minded people at the BBC. We all shared the same inquisitive approach into how interactive TV news could work. Now that we have all gone our separate ways I miss those “water cooler moments” when we came up with amazingly ambitious ideas. Some of those ideas live on in the things we engineered and rolled out. Others are yet to develop into a tangible form. But they will, as we adopt and implement the new MPEG-4, 7, and 21 technologies.

TABLE OF CONTENT:
Chapter 01 - Introduction to Video Compression
Chapter 02 - Why Video Compression Is Needed
Chapter 03 - What Are We Trying to Compress?
Chapter 04 - Film
Chapter 05 - Video
Chapter 06 - Digital Image Formats
Chapter 07 - Matters Concerning Audio
Chapter 08 - Choosing the Right Codec
Chapter 09 - How Encoders Work
Chapter 10 - The MPEG-1 Codec
Chapter 11 - The MPEG-2 Codec
Chapter 12 - The MPEG-4 Part 2 Codec
Chapter 13 - The H.264 Codec
Chapter 14 - Encoded Output Delivered as a Bit Stream
Chapter 15 - Live Encoding
Chapter 16 - Files and Storage Formats
Chapter 17 - Tape Formats
Chapter 18 - Commercial Issues, Digital Rights Management, and Licensing
Chapter 19 - Network Delivery Mechanisms
Chapter 20 - Streaming
Chapter 21 - Players and Platforms
Chapter 22 - Windows Media
Chapter 23 - QuickTime
Chapter 24 - Real Networks
Chapter 25 - Other Player Alternatives
Chapter 26 - Putting Video on the Web
Chapter 27 - Digital Television
Chapter 28 - Digital Video on the Move
Chapter 29 - Building Your Encoding Hardware
Chapter 30 - Setting Up Your Encoding Software
Chapter 31 - Preparing to Encode Your Video
Chapter 32 - Ingesting Your Source Content
Chapter 33 - Temporal Preprocessing
Chapter 34 - Spatial Preprocessing
Chapter 35 - Color Correction
Chapter 36 - Cutting Out the Noise
Chapter 37 - Preparing the Audio for Encoding
Chapter 38 - Encoding—Go for It!
Chapter 39 - Where Shall We Go Next?
Appendix A - Problem Solver
Appendix B - Hardware Suppliers
Appendix C - Software Suppliers
Appendix D - Film Stock Sizes
Appendix E - Video Raster Sizes
Appendix F - MPEG-2 Profiles and Levels
Appendix G - MPEG-4 Profiles and Levels
Appendix H - ISMAProfiles
Appendix I - File Types
Appendix J - Source-Video Formats
Appendix K - Source-Audio Formats
Appendix L - Formats Versus Players
Appendix M - Connectors
Appendix N - Important Standards and Professional Associations

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