Fundamentals and Evolution of MPEG-2 Systems: Paving the MPEG Road

14Content Support in MPEG-2 Systems

How the various content formats are supported in MPEG-2 systems. Packetization of the content in PES packets and sections, the associated signaling parameters and required descriptors. Decoding of each format in the STD model and the structure of the involved decoding branch in the STD.

14.1 Introduction

For a wide variety of content formats, carriage over MPEG-2 system streams has been specified in the MPEG-2 system standard and in amendments thereto, resulting in the evolution of transport capabilities discussed in Section 8.3 and Figures 8.1 and 8.2. It should be noted however that other standardization bodies, such as DVB, ATSC and SMPTE, also specified carriage of content over a MPEG-2 system stream, mostly formats beyond the scope of MPEG. This book discusses only those content formats for which carriage is specified in the MPEG-2 system standard. For each such format, transport over a MPEG-2 system stream needs to be specified in detail; this includes the following:

• The available transport methods in PES packets and sections, with assigned stream-ID, stream-type and table-ID value(s).
• Unambiguous access unit definition, if not provided in the specification of the content format.
• Constraints to be applied of the elementary stream data prior to packetization in PES packets or sections.
• Rules for packetization in PES packets or sections.
• The use of fields in the header of a transport packet, a PES packet or a section and the use of ...