Chapter 13 – MPEG-2

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of MPEG-2 video compression standard. MPEG-2 is an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 13818), and consists of eleven parts. MPEG-2 extends MPEG-1 to cover a wider range of applications. The primary application targeted during the definition process is all-digital transmission of broadcast-quality video at bit-rates of 4–9 Mbps. MPEG-2 is useful for many other applications, such as HDTV, and supports bit-rates of 1.5–60 Mbps. The Digital Storage Media Command and Control (DSM-CC) extension is a toolkit for developing control channels associated with MPEG-2 streams. This extension also provides VCR-type features, such as fast-forward, rewind, and pause and can be used for a wide variety of other purposes, such as packet data transport. MPEG-2 supports up to five full-bandwidth channels compatible with MPEG-1 audio coding. It also extends the coding of MPEG-1 audio to half sampling rates (16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, and 24 kHz) for improved quality for bitrates at or below 64 kbps per channel.