Codec Central - MPEG Codecs



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MPEG-2

General Information

Overview
MPEG-2 is a standard for broadcast-quality digitally encoded video. It offers outstanding image quality and resolution (somewhat better than laserdisk). MPEG-2 is the primary video standard for DVD-Video.

Playback of MPEG-2 video currently requires special hardware, which is built into all DVD-Video players, and most (but not all) DVD-ROM kits.

MPEG-2 was based on MPEG-1, but optimized for higher data rates. This allows for excellent quality at DVD rates (300-1000KBps), but tends to produce results inferior to MPEG-1 at lower rates. MPEG-2 is definitely not appropriate for use over network connections (except in very special, ultra-high-performances cases).

Architectures Supported

DirectShow
DVD-Video players
Some cable/satellite distribution systems

Pros, Cons & Tips

Pros

Excellent image quality

Cons

Very few people are currently capable of viewing MPEG-2
Licensing fees (typically US $0.04 - $0.40 per unit) are required to distribute MPEG-2 video.

Ideal source material	Broadcast-quality video
Supported bit depths	24 bit
Compression time	Very slow (software), realtime (hardware)
Temporal compression?	Yes
Special features	-
Encoder requirements	Commercial encoder software and/or hardware
Decoder requirements	MPEG-2 decoder hardware
Encoder availability	Commercially available from several companies
Decoder availability	built into all DVD-Video players, and most (but not all) DVD-ROM kits
Algorithm	Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) with motion prediction Based on MPEG-1
Manufacturer	Many

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