MPEG-4
Cedar Wingate
MUMT 621 Slide Presentation I
Professor Ichiro Fujinaga
September 24, 2009
MPEG-4
• MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standard developed by MPEG (Moving Picture
Experts Group)
• International effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from
all over the world.
• Formal ISO/IEC designation is ISO/IEC 14496, was finalized in October
1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999.
• Builds on the proven success of three fields
– Digital television
– Interactive graphics applications (synthetic content)
– Interactive multimedia (World Wide Web, distribution of and access to
content)
• MPEG-4 provides the standardized technological elements enabling the
integration of the production, distribution and content access paradigms
of the three fields.
• Based on QuickTime architecture
(description from MPEG-Industry Forum A)
Goals
• Designed to scale down
– Originally designed as a teleconferencing tool
– Dial-up internet bandwidths
– Small devices. i.e. cell phones and PDAs
Features
• Container format
– Combine different multimedia streams into one file
• Streamable
• Backwards compatible
• Dynamic presentation engine
– Media Objects
• Audio (including Structured Audio), Speech, Synthetic, 3D, 2D, Text,
etc.
– Interactivity
– Composition takes place after decoding instead of before
encoding
• Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP)
Structured Audio Elements
Structured audio has five elements
• SAOL (Structured Audio Orchestra Language) – signal
processing language for describing musical instruments
• SASL (Structured Audio Score Language) – language for
describing performance using instruments of SAOL
program
• SASBF (Structured Audio Sound Band Format) – allows
the transmission of sample banks.
• Scheduler Description – used to translate MIDI or SASL
to events internally in a decoder
• References to MIDI – supported MIDI messages and
their meaning
Implementations
• File formats and codecs that use the MPEG-4
toolbox
– AAC (Apple Quicktime)
– XviD
– DivX5 (developed from the “DivX ;-)” format)
– ffmpeg
– 3ivx
– Nero Digital
Parts
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Many additions to MPEG-4
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Part 1 Systems
Part 2 Visual
Part 3 Audio
Part 4 Conformance defines how to test an MPEG-4 implementation
Part 5 gives a significant body of Reference Software, that can be used to start implementing the standard, and that serves as an
example of how to do things.
Part 6 DMIF (Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework) defines an interface between application and network/storage.
Part 7 of MPEG-4 defines an optimized video encoder (in addition to the Reference Software, which is a correct, but not
necessarily optimal implementation of the standard)
Part 8: Transport is in principle not defined in the standard, but part 8 defines how to map MPEG-4 streams onto IP transport.
Part 9: Reference Hardware Description, Phase 1 Hardware Accelerators, Phase 2 Optimized Reference Software integration
through Virtual Socket
Part 10: Advanced Video Coding (the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard)
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This is the standard that is used in Blu-Ray DVD, HD-DVD, and videos from the iTunes store
Part 11: Scene description (to be split off from part 1)
Part 12: ISO Media File Format.
Part 13 : IPMP Extensions.
Part 14 : MP4 File Format (based on part 12).
Part 15 : AVC File Format (also based on part 12).
Part 16 : AFX (Animation Framework eXtensions) and MuW (Multi-user Worlds).
Part 17: Time Text subtitle format
Part 18: Font Compression and Streaming (for OpenType fonts).
Part 19: Synthesized Texture Stream.
Part 20: Lightweight Application Scene Representation (LASeR)
Part 21: MPEG-J Graphical Framework eXtension (GFX)
Part 22: Open Font Format Specification (OFFS) based on JOpenType
Part 23: Symbolic Music Representation (SMR)
Timeline
• 1998
– Parts 1 (Systems), 2 (Visual), 3 (Audio), and 6 (DMIF) adopted.
• 1999
– Parts 4 (Testing) and 5 (Reference) adopted.
– The fully backward compatible extensions under the title of MPEG-4
Version 2 were frozen at the end of 1999
• 2001
– Parts 7 (Optimized video encoding) and 8 (4 on IP framework)
adopted.
• 2002
– Part 10, advanced video compression is incorporated into MPEG-4
• 2003
– Part 14 (MP4 filename)
Bibliography
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Bouthililier, Larry. “The MPEG Video Standards – from 1 to 21.” Streaming Media.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=8569&page=3&c=7 (accessed September 22, 2009).
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Doom9 Forum contributors. “MP4 FAQ.” Doom9’s Forum.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62723 (accessed September 22, 2009).
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Jacobs, Stephen. “Start at the beginning: An MPEG Timeline.” Streaming Media,
http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=7472 (accessed September 22, 2009).
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Koenen, Rob. “Overview of the MPEG-4 Standard.” International Organisation for Standardisation.
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-4.htm (accessed September 22, 2009)
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MPEG-4 Industry Forum contributor. (A) “MPEG-4 – The Media Standard.” MPEG-4 Industry Forum,
http://www.m4if.org/public/documents/vault/m4-out-20027.pdf (accessed September 22, 2009)
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MPEG-4 Industry Forum contributor. (B) “What is MPEG-4?” MPEG Industry Forum.
http://www.mpegif.org/mpeg4/ (accessed September 22, 2009)
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Wikipedia contributors. “MPEG-4.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4
(accessed September 22, 2009).
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Wikipedia contributors. “H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC (accessed September 22, 2009).
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Zoia, Giorgio. "MPEG Technologies: Structured Audio." International Organisation for Standardisation.
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/technologies/mp04-sa/index.htm (accessed September 22, 2009)