Data-Compression.org

data compression link collection

MPEG-4 Visual / H.263

MPEG-4 is an ISO standard (ISO/IEC international standard 14496) developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It defines the deployment of non-proprietary multimedia content independently of platform or transmission medium. It has relied on and taken from a number of existing technologies while at the same time add-ing a number of innovative tools and concepts. MPEG-4 Visual (ISO/IEC 14496-2) - part of MPEG-4 standart for visual data coding. Motivated by the need for low bit rate (less than 64 kbps) video communication, the ITU-T initiated the work on the H.263 coding standard in 1993. Although its coding structure is based on that of H.261, H.263 supports new baseline coding methods as well as four optional modes that provide better picture quality at low bit rates with little additional complexity.


Overview of the MPEG-4 Standard

MPEG-4 Overview - (V.18 – Singapore Version). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N4030,
March 2001.

http://www.edgesoft.co.kr/download/edgedata/MPEG-4%20Overview.pdf

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Posted in July 6th, 2007

MPEG-4 Video Verification Model version 18.0

ISO/IEC recommendation MPEG-4 Visual (JTC1/SC29/WG11 N3908). Approved January 2001.

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/working_documents/mpeg-04/visual/video_vm.zip

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Posted in July 2nd, 2007

H.263 : Video coding for low bit rate communication

ITU-T recommendation H.263. Approved in January 2005.

http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.263/e

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Posted in July 2nd, 2007

WinMPG Video Convert

This is another Swiss-Army Knife converter, letting you move back and forth between AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DivX, and SVCD formats.

Version 6.7 is shipping as of June, 2007.

http://www.winmpg.com/

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Posted in June 30th, 2007

VLC - the cross-platform media player

VLC is an Open Source multimedia player that supports your usual mix of audio and video formats. Support is currently included for MPEG-1, -2, -4, h.264, mp3, ogg and more. The site includes precompiled binaries for a really nice range of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, varios Linux flavors, and even BeOS!

Version 0.8.6 of this player is shipping as of June, 2007.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

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Posted in June 30th, 2007

Gspot Codec Information Appliance

GSpot identifies presence or absence of “B-VOP”, “Qpel”, and “GMC”, thus allowing the user to determine if a DivX5 file is compatible with KISS and other popular hardware DivX players. Provides information about MPEG1 or MPEG2 video and/or MPEG1 or MPEG2 audio either as “elementary” streams or multiplexed into an MPEG1 “system stream” or an MPEG2 “program stream”. Limited support for MPEG4 video when contained in an AVI stream, such as DivX5.

Version 2.7a is shipping as of February, 2007.

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

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Posted in June 30th, 2007

MPEG4IP

The MPEG4IP project provides an MPEG and IETF standards-based system for encoding, streaming, and playing MPEG-4 encoded audio and video.

Version 1.5 is shipping as of November, 2006.

http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net/

         

Posted in June 29th, 2007

DivX

This is the current home for the DivX encoder and decoder. DivX ships in three different versions which offer varying levels of features for varying prices (including free.) Shipping DivX Video 6.6 as of May, 2007.

http://www.divx.com/divx/

         

Posted in June 29th, 2007

XviD.org - Home of the XviD Codec

This project is developing an open source MPEG-4 codec. The code is currently ported to Solaris, Win32, and Linux.

Version 1.1.3 is shipping in June, 2007.

http://www.xvid.org/

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Posted in June 29th, 2007

VideoNet

A video conferencing project for Windows PCs using an H.263 video codec.

http://codeproject.com/internet/videonet.asp

         

Posted in July 4th, 2004

The MPEG home page

An impressive set of links to papers, schedules, articles, and contacts for MPEG. Clearly the place to go for information relating to the standardization process.

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/

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Posted in May 15th, 2004

IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4

The IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4 consists of a set of JavaTM classes and APIs with five sample applications: three cross-platform playback applications and two tools for generating MPEG-4 content for use with MPEG-4-compliant devices. These applications are as follows:

  • AVgen: a simple, easy-to-use GUI tool for creating audio/video-only content for ISMA- or 3GPP-compliant devices
  • XMTBatch: a tool for creating rich MPEG-4 content beyond simple audio and video
  • M4Play: an MPEG-4 client playback application
  • M4Applet for ISMA: a Java player applet for ISMA-compliant content
  • M4Applet for HTTP: a Java applet for MPEG-4 content played back over HTTP.

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/tk4mpeg4?open&S_PKG=&S_TACT=103AMW61&S_CMP=GR&ca=dgr-ln
xwd01tk4mpeg4

         

Posted in January 11th, 2004

The MPEG Industry Forum

Stated objective: To further the adoption of the MPEG-4 Standard, by establishing MPEG-4 as an accepted and widely used standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end users..

Update: This group has now changed it’s name to The MPEG Industry Forum, and have expanded their charter to include all emerging MPEG standards. For right now that includes MPEG-7 and MPEG-21, but we’re not ruling out anything in the future.

http://www.m4if.org/

         

Posted in July 17th, 2003

MagicEyes MMSP-2

The MMSP-2 chip has been developed by MagicEyes for use in consumer products. It can decode MPEG-1, -2, and -4 as well as various audio codecs. While you’re asking, yes, it has an LCD controller, a Poly Wavetable sound synthesizer, and more.

http://www.mesdigital.com/Products/product_mmsp2.asp

         

Posted in April 17th, 2003

XViD Quantizer Parser (XvidQP)

XVidQP is a tool that is designed to tell you something about the quality of an MPEG-4 stream. It does this by giving you a batch of reports, including:

  • Quantization values of I-Frames and P-Frames
  • Average quantizer value of I-Frames and P-Frames
  • Graphical histogram distribution of global clip quantizers
  • Minimum and maximum frame sizes of all frames

It looks right now like this tool is only shipping for Win32.

Beta 3 was shipping as of March, 2003.

http://xvidqp.sourceforge.net/

         

Posted in March 31st, 2003

MPEG-4 Industry Forum Resources Link

Links to scads of papers, web sites, software, etc., all related to the MPEG-4 standard.

http://www.m4if.org/resources.php

         

Posted in October 30th, 2002

MPEG-4 encoding on a cell phone?

This article describes a proof-of-concept app running on a Nokia 7650 that performs MPEG-4 encoding and decoding, creating a portable video phone. No word on how you can get the code, or how difficult it would be to port this Symbios OS product to other platforms. Still, the company that developed the product, Hantro Products, does supply the codecs that do the trick.

http://www.infosync.no/show.php?id=2016

         

Posted in July 9th, 2002

iVAST

This company labels itself as “The world leader in end-to-end MPEG-4 Solutions.” Looks like they sell a suite of authoring and encoding tools, and perhaps some server software. Follow the link to “About MPEG-4″ and you’ll get a little bit of text plus some more links.

http://www.ivast.com/

         

Posted in June 4th, 2002

MPEG-4: The Standard for Digital Media

Apple has a page with info on MPEG-4. They use this page to explain how this all fits in with QuickTime.

http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/

         

Posted in June 4th, 2002

MPEG-4 foe calls for antitrust probe

On2 Technologies is asking the US Department of Justice to take action against the coalition of MPEG-4 patent holders, arguing that the coalition is anti-competitive. Maybe not just a coincidence, On2 is presently pushing their own streaming format with industry standards groups.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-879439.html

         

Posted in April 9th, 2002

H.263 White Paper

A white paper discussing the history and various permutations of the H.263 video encoding standard from the folks at UBVideo.

http://ubvideo.com/public/h263-white_paper.pdf

         

Posted in March 19th, 2002

Wikipedia entry: MPEG-4

This Wikipedia entry describes the MPEG-4 standard, the version of MPEG designed for lower bit-rate applications. Light on detail.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=MPEG-4

         

Posted in January 27th, 2002

ITU Standard : H.263

Links to the various parts of the H.263 standard on the ITU page. Get out your credit card if you want a copy - the ITU doesn’t give things away!

http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=folders&lang=e&parent=T-REC-H.263

         

Posted in January 27th, 2002

Toshiba Announces MPEG-4 Support Chips

Toshiba is creating MPEG-4 support chips that vendors are looking to included in mobile handset. This article notes that the chipset will be designed to work with specific baseband hardware, such as Qualcomm’s, and might not work elsewhere.

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20011030S0044

         

Posted in November 4th, 2001

TI releases DSP Developer Support for JPEG2000

Texas Instruments announced the release of a DSP based Image Developer’s Kit, with support coming for JPEG2000, MPEG-4, and other standards.

http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/news/2001/01013.htm

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Posted in January 25th, 2001

Bilddatenkompression/Image Data Compression

Subtitled Basics, Standards and Wavelet-Based Algorithms for Image and Video Coding. This German-language textbook contains full source code (ANSI-C) of a wavelet-based image coder.

http://www-nt.e-technik.uni-rostock.de/~ts/Buch/book.html

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Posted in January 4th, 2001

H.263 Video Coding

Peter Cherriman’s page on H.263 coding, includes information, pointers, and a couple of demo sequences.

http://rice.ecs.soton.ac.uk/peter/h263/h263.html

         

Posted in July 4th, 2000

Tiernan Communications, Inc.

These folks sell a couple of boxes that do MPEG-2 encoding. Looks like they are oriented towards the video broadcasting business.

http://www.tiernan.com/

         

Posted in June 3rd, 2000

ScalVico H.263 Support

ScalVico is a project that refers to a Scalable Video Codec. Apparently the package now supports H.263.

http://www4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~jnweiger/ScalVico/vic/

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Posted in April 18th, 2000

MPEG LA

This company is the licensing authority created by the owners of the most or all of the patents related to MPEG. Apparently they have the authority to provide one-stop shopping for your royalty arrangements.

http://www.mpegla.com/

         

Posted in January 23rd, 2000