Compression for Great Video and Audio, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 11 MPEG-4

After the clear resounding success of MPEG-2, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) started work on MPEG-4 in 1993. Version 1 of the specification was approved in 1998, version 2 followed in 2000, and the all-important H.264 (MPEG-4 part 10) was unveiled in 2003.

In general terms, MPEG-4 is a standard way to define, encode, and play back time-based media. In practice, MPEG-4 can be used in radically different ways in radically different situations. MPEG-4 was designed to be used for all sorts of things, including delivering 2D still images, animated 3D facial models with lip sync, two-way video conferencing, and streaming video on the web. Many of those features have never been used in practice, and the particular features ...