Video compression (found 232 titles)

The H.264 Advanced Video Compression Standard

H.264 Advanced Video Coding or MPEG-4 Part 10 is fundamental to a growing range of markets such as high definition broadcasting, internet video sharing, mobile video and digital surveillance. This book reflects the growing importance and implementation of H.264 video technology. Offering a detailed overview of the system, it explains the syntax, tools and features of H.264 and equips readers with practical advice on how to get the most out of the standard.

• Packed with clear examples and illustrations to explain H.264 technology in an accessible and practical way.
• Covers basic video coding concepts, video formats and visual quality.
• Explains how to measure and optimise the performance of H.264 and how to balance bitrate, computation and video quality.
• Analyses recent work on scalable and multi-view versions of H.264, case studies of H.264 codecs and new technological developments such as the popular High Profile extensions.
• An invaluable companion for developers, broadcasters, system integrators, academics and students who want to master this burgeoning state-of-the-art technology.

"[This book] unravels the mysteries behind the latest H.264 standard and delves deeper into each of the operations in the codec. The reader can implement (simulate, design, evaluate, optimize) the codec with all profiles and levels. The book ends with extensions and directions (such as SVC and MVC) for further research." Professor K. R. Rao, The University of Texas at Arlington, co-inventor of the Discrete Cosine Transform

Customes reviews 2

my point of view (2010-08-08)

There is nothing new compared to the old version.
It doesn't cover information in depth. If I want to study H.264, I think the book tell us less.
Acutally it can't help us understandard how H.264 works.
The only chapter worth to read is the chapter of "transform and quantization".

Great Overview (2010-08-08)

This is a very clear, well written overview of video compression particularly H.264. It should be accessible to anyone with a CS/engineering background without requiring significant knowledge of information theory.

The book is richly illustrated with diagrams that clearly show how the various prediction and artifact removal schemes work. These illustrations are often paired with images from test videos demonstrating the visual impact of the techniques under discussion.

Having just finished it, I now feel that I have some understanding of how H.264 works, how it is different and how it will likely evolve -- highly recommended.

Real World Video Compression

Customes reviews 11

Great book for a novice!!! (2010-05-27)

This is a great book for "jack of all trades, master of none." (doesn't quite makes sense, but hope you get the drift) You probably won't be able to write a master's thesis on video compression after reading this book, but you will know enough on the subject to sound like a subject matter expert. Provides great background info on the subject, concepts described and explained are easy to understand, and includes a great deal of info on commercial products available. I highly recommend this book for a novice who wants to be well versed in the subject of video compression.

Clear and thorough (2010-04-25)

This book is precisely the one I was looking for: both very precise and easy to grasp. There is theory and practice (step-by-step explanations of various softwares), and further points of view on the matter with professional compressors (what a job!).

Video Compresson (2009-09-20)

Bits and pieces of info on many different software apps but not enough of anything to be useful. The chapter on compression for the web was sorely lacking, which is why I bought the book.

Good book for fundamentals of video compression (2009-03-20)

This is a very good book, it gives an excellent explaination in video compression fundamentals.

Totally satisfied purchaser (2009-03-14)

I found this book very helpful in providing the answers to the questions I've had about compressing video for maximum quality. I would like to see more generalization on the actual application. I use Sony Vegas and DVD Architect so the tutorials in the publication we not very helpful. All in all, I found the book to be excellent and would recommend it to anyone interested in the technical aspects of video production.

Compression for Great Video and Audio, Second Edition: Master Tips and Common Sense (DV Expert)

Learn how to compress video and audio with optimal quality and minimal hassles. Renowned expert Ben Waggoner teaches you to improve the quality of your final content and develop effective workflows. Understand the basic concepts of vision and hearing, apply that knowledge in the context of compression, then move onto practical, applicable information for creating, editing, and compressing the best video and audio, whether you're delivering for the web, DVD, Blu-ray, phones, or beyond.

• Clear examples of how to make the best choices in real-world projects
  


• Covers Mac and Windows products for a complete look at today's compression technologies: all the different tools, codecs, and formats for different kinds of deliverables are described, focusing on how to pick the right options for particular projects, players, and sources

Formats

• Windows Media








• QuickTime








• Flash FLV and F4V








• MPEG-4 and H.264








• MPEG-2








• Ogg Vorbis and Theora








• Silverlight and Smooth Streaming

Devices

• iPod and iPhone








• Zune HD








• Playstation Portable








• Playstation 3








• Xbox 360








• DVD and Blu-ray

Customes reviews 2

Mostly for the initiated (2010-05-05)

This book is by no means an introductory text. To grasp the majority of the material, one needs to be past the beginner level in understanding compression. Waggoner is writing to those who already know quite a bit about compression, though I'm not so sure that he realizes that. That often happens when a writer knows a subject so well that he has forgotten what it is like to know little of the subject, and so his explanations assume much more than the uninitiated reader knows. Example: There are numerous abbreviations for a myriad of compression terms. So if you don't know what those abbreviations mean, it is extremely tough to follow along. And even if you knew what all those letters and numbers stood for, in the text of the book, Waggoner does not explain them to where a beginner would understand them.

To make matters worse, a glossary was promised in the introduction of the book, but there is none to be found. My copy has a bunch of blank pages where the glossary should be!

I am certain that this is a fantastic text for those who already understand compression, but beginners will need to go elsewhere to get the basics, and then use Waggoner's reference text to perfect their knowledge. To be sure, if you are able to plow through the book, it WILL give even a beginner "a sense" of what is going on. But, as one who has only a light understanding of compression, I was hoping for explanations that I could grasp.

And hopefully your copy will come with the promised glossary.

Essential resource for anyone wanting to do Video or Audio (2009-12-15)

This is particularly good for folks doing Web work but is a great overall reference. Lots of interesting resources e.g. WMV9 registry tweaks via WMV9 PowerToy from alexzambelli.com/WMV/. Ben does show a little MS bias but he principal video strategist for Silverlight.

A couple of inconsequential errors in fact: i.e. DVCPRO is a Panasonic format not JVC.

Lots and lots of excellent information and references a must have for anyone who compresses video especially for the Web!

Fundamentals of Multimedia

This book offers introductory-to-advanced material on all major aspects of multimedia, including pointers to current links for information and demos at the most advanced level, to form a complete reference. Topics covered include introduction to multimedia, graphics/image data representations, color models in images and video, basics of digital audio, lossy compression, image compression standards, basic video compression techniques, basic audio compression techniques, multimedia networks, and more. For professionals involved in Computer-Aided Engineering, Computer Systems Organization, Computer-Communication Networks, Computing Methodologies, Coding and Information Theory, or anyone interested in a good reference on current multimedia technologies.

Customes reviews 1

Good textbook (2006-04-18)

I use this book as a textbook for an undergraduate course on Multimedia Application Development (together with Guzdial's book on Squeak).

It's a good book if you want to know about the way multimedia content is encoded and transmitted. It's not very deep but, as I mentioned, I use it for an undergraduate course...

An Introduction to Video Compression in C/C++ (Volume 1)

The book introduces the basic principles of video compression, and presents its implementations in C/C++. Topics covered include: An introduction to information theory Imaging basics, color models Image storage formats Macroblocks, DCT, quantization Entropy encoding, Run-level encoding Motion estimation and compensation SDL Video Interface, multi-threaded programming Searching techniques FFmpeg libraries

Customes reviews 2

Digital Video Compression Explained (2010-05-21)

This book is fairly easy to read. Though it is an introduction,
it covers in-depth the principles of digital video compression.
Theories are further elaborated by easy-to-read C/C++ code.
For some topics such as YCbCr conversion and DCT, the author
first presents the code in a straightforward way, which is
easy to understand but not efficient. The author then presents
code using integer arithmetic and special algorithms which are
a lot more effective. In particular, I like the way the author
handles points and vectors. Instead of using one single class
to represent both points and vectors, the author distinguishes
points from vectors by defining two different classes. This is
a lot clearer than the usual homogeneous representation.

A practical book for learning video compression (2010-03-25)

The book provides ready-to-use code to help
understand the theories of information and
video compression. It will ber useful for anyone
who wants to learn video compression or wants
to develop royalty-free video codec.

MPEG Video Compression Standard (Digital Multimedia Standards Series)

This book gives the professional and student one place to look for answers and guidance on MPEG. It incorporates low-level as well as sophisticated reviews of the major technical elements,and includes sufficient tutorial material that even naive users should be able to understand the answers to their MPEG questions. It contains many pictorial examples so that the benefits and limits of MPEG can be estimated from the data in the book. The full functionality of the entire MPEG standard is exclaimed. Guidance is given about the purpose behind some of the choices and implementers. Paricular emphasis is placed on the image compression of the MPEG standard.

Customes reviews 7

MPEG-2 guys are more trustworthy than H.264 folks (2005-10-14)

A great book to have! MPEG-2 experts like Chad always provide more real stuffs than some later folks, who might only think to be some "chair"

Explains MPEG-1 video format in detail (2005-09-16)

This book is really divided into three parts. Each subsection of each chapter features a difficulty rating that is particularly helpful. A circle is present at the start of each chapter subsection, and it is filled proportional to the difficulty of the material. The first part of the book is chapters one through five which have a very general overview of video compression principles used in MPEG. This section is rather shallow, and if you want a deep treatment of this subject matter you would be well advised to look elsewhere. The second part of the book consists of chapters six through fifteen, and is the outline of the MPEG-1 video compression standard in detail. This section is very good, since it explains at a bit and byte level everything in a MPEG-1 data stream. In fact, MPEG-1 was described in such detail that I was actually able to design a working MPEG-1 decoder using the information from this book. Chapters nine and ten describe the MPEG-2 video data format, but not in such detail as MPEG-1 is discussed in this book. This is because this book series has a separate volume devoted to the MPEG-2 standard. The final section of this book, chapters 16 through 19, is just an overview of MPEG patents, history, and vendors, and by the time I am writing this review, section three is quite obsolete. MPEG-1 is intended for data rates on the order of 1.5 Mbits per second, which is still adequate for some users. Thus, even nine years after its publication this book is still a worthy read if you are seeking to understand MPEG-1 or code an MPEG-1 video decoder.

Programmer's viewpoint (2002-09-06)

This is a great book to learn the mpeg1 format from. With its help you can confidently write a mpeg1 decoder. I have not read the official spec, but I found the descriptions given in the book quite lucid, in spite of the fact that I started to read this book without any video compression background. However, this is not a book on video compression in general. Surely a book on THAT topic would not have a title bearing the words "mpeg" and "standard". I have some experience in reading file format standards, and I only wish every file format standard would have such a nice book to explain it!

The book even covers fundamentals like DCT and Huffman coding (as much as is needed in this book). It has entire chapters on motion estimation and motion compensation. I like the way the book starts off with a general informative overview, rather than as a typical "standards manual" starting with a list of notations and fonts to be used.

The pseudo codes given in the book are taken from the original spec (with due references). These are explained with flowcharts.

If you are trying to learn video compression in general, then this is not the book for you. There are plenty of books on that topic. This book serves a much more esoteric purpose of elucidating the gory details of one of the most important video file formats, and it fulfils this purpose with complete applomb!

I disagree with the bad reviews (2002-05-01)

This book gave me the knowledge required to understand the syntax of MPEG1 sytem and video streams as well as understand the compression algorithms utilized.
As a Digital Video Specialist, I still refer to this book four years after buying it.

A great book, but not the only one you will need. (2000-04-20)

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I found this book to be a great resource! The MPEG-1 codec is covered in some depth, including syntax. Other topics like MPEG-2 and rate control are also touched on. What this book (and most others on the topic) is missing, is an in-depth discussion on motion estimation techniques. The Kluwer book on motion estimation by Borko Furht will fill in some of the blanks, but is too expensive for what you get. All in all, I think this book is suited for someone wanting to impliment or understand an implimentation of the codec. It is not so much for the person looking for theory on video compression. The book, "Video Compression", by Peter Symes is a great one for that !

H.264 and MPEG-4 Video Compression: Video Coding for Next Generation Multimedia

Following on from the successful MPEG-2 standard, MPEG-4 Visual is enabling a new wave of multimedia applications from Internet video streaming to mobile video conferencing. The new H.264 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ standard promises impressive compression performance and is gaining support from developers and manufacturers.  The first book to cover H.264 in technical detail, this unique resource takes an application-based approach to the two standards and the coding concepts that underpin them.

• Presents a practical, step-by-step, guide to the MPEG-4 Visual and H.264 standards for video compression.
• Introduces the basic concepts of digital video and covers essential background material required for an understanding of both standards.
• Provides side-by-side performance comparisons of MPEG-4 Visual and H.264 and advice on how to approach and interpret them to ensure conformance.
• Examines the way that the standards have been shaped and developed, discussing the composition and procedures of the VCEG and MPEG standardisation groups.

Focussing on compression tools and profiles for practical multimedia applications, this book ‘decodes’ the standards, enabling developers, researchers, engineers and students to rapidly get to grips with both H.264 and MPEG-4 Visual.

Dr Iain Richardson leads the Image Communication Technology research group at the Robert Gordon University in Scotland and is the author of over 40 research papers and two previous books on video compression technology.

Customes reviews 6

A good starting point (2008-10-25)

This book feels a gap between high level tutorials that do not get into any kind of technical details and the actual specification documents that can be overwhelming at first sight.

The first part of the book is an overview of video coding and provide a technical description of important tool used in video coding such as DCT transform, motion estimation, motion compensation etc.

The second part of the book focus on the specifics of MPEG-4 and H.264.
More focus on the H.264 part would have been welcome.

Totally solid, and still the only book out there (2007-06-13)

I almost didn't get this book because some of the other reviews are pretty bad. I'm glad I got it!

This isn't a standard. So you won't find every table that's part of h.264, but you'll find enough that the standard will be accessible after you read this book. And given that the goal is conversational instead of documentary, Richardson has done a terrific job of simultaneously describing a host of relatively difficult concepts, explaining how they fit together, and explaining their places in the MPEG4 and H.264 standards.

This is probably not a first book on video compression; for that, you might try Digital Video Compression (with CD-ROM). If you get that other book, though, only read the first half. (The second half is absurdly dated and not very helpful.) I think it's reasonable to read the first half of that book, then this one, and then jump right into the standard itself (for whatever purposes you want to do that).

Pretty useless (2006-11-11)

The book does not go deep into the H.264 standard.
It seems that it was supposed to be a review of MPEG-4, with H.264 added as an afterthought.
I expected the level of the Mitchell / Pennebaker classic book on MPEG, but was disappointed.

A book which is better than many overview papers (2005-10-14)

I like the book on overview of H.264 (because it is no worse than most of overview papers, even those in IEEE by H.264 chairs).

One Chapter on H.264 Only - Don't Bother (2005-09-16)

I got this book since it is the only book on H.264 I know of.
There is a single chapter on H.264, chapter 6. The free
on-line papers from Richardson are mostly what is in that chapter.

There are plenty of H.264 overviews on the net for free
which cover the subject in greater depth which are more current.

The VC-1 and H.264 Video Compression Standards for Broadband Video Services (Multimedia Systems and Applications)

The MPEG committee standardized the MPEG AVC (H.264) video coding standard in May 2003. The standard has since seen strong interest and adoption from the industry. A competing standard developed by Microsoft, referred to as VC-1, was standardized in SMPTE in April 2006. VC-1 is essentially a standardized version of Microsoft's Windows Media Video (WMV-9). Both H.264 and VC-1 are highly efficient compression standards that enable high-quality video services such as IPTV and Blu-ray Disc. H.264 and VC-1 are both mandated for high definition video services on Blu-ray Disc. These two standards are expected to form the basis for a new generation of high-quality broadband video services.

The VC-1 and H.264 Video Compression Standards for Broadband Video Services covers these video coding standards, as well as issues in broadband video delivery. No other book about H.264 or VC-1 covers the standards in such detail. This book interprets the complex standards specifications and makes these new technologies accessible. Both authors have more than 12 years experience working on video compression and communications.

The VC-1 and H.264 Video Compression Standards for Broadband Video Services is designed for researchers and a professional audience, including video engineers, and practitioners in consumer electronics, telecommunications and media compression industries. This book is also suitable as a secondary text or reference for advanced-level students in computer science and electrical engineering.

Customes reviews 1

Good coverage of the standards (2009-08-15)

This book is one of the more detail on the subject.
It covers both VC-1 and H.264 with an emphasis on their usage in MPEG-2 streams.
This books cover topics than I haven't seen in details in other book. I did particularly found the chapter on HRD, rate control and interlace coding interesting.
This book is probably not the best as an introduction to VC-1 or H.264 and a prior knowledge of those standards is necessary in my opinion.
For those not interested to one of the compression standard, the book is organize in such a way that skipping section related to one standard doesn't affect the reading of the remaining section. I did only read material relative to H.264 in my first reading.

Overall a very good resource.

Digital Video: An introduction to MPEG-2

Digital Video offers comprehensive coverage of the MPEG-2 audio/visual digital compression standard. The treatment includes the specifics needed to implement an MPEG-2 Decoder, including the syntax and semantics of the coded bitstreams. Since the MPEG-2 Encoders are not specified by the standard, and are actually closely held secrets of many vendors, the book only outlines the fundamentals of encoder design and algorithm optimization.

Customes reviews 9

I prefer rate it 0 star. (2002-07-10)

This book won't make you understand anything about MPEG if you don't know anything about MPEG.

If you already know something about MPEG, definatelly you don't have to read it.

All graphs in this book are not related with context, and same to the math equations.

Confused and over-detailed (2002-04-24)

Unfortunately I bought this book after reading the first three reviews. I think the later reviews are closer to the mark.

The book is confusing and overly detailed with no unifying thread. I bought the standard, and reading it after this book was like a breath of fresh air.

wasting time books (2000-07-12)

With many years of MPEG experience, I still found the book boring. Simple concepts become chaos from author's poor sentences. Almost all graphs are used for confusing the reader. I could hardly finish reading. Frankly, all video gurus in our company dislike the book. If you really want to learn MPEG-2 or MPEG-4, go directly to the standards. They are more clearly written.

wasting time book (2000-07-11)

If you really want to learn MPEG2 or MPEG4, go directly to the standards. The authors try their best to confuse the reader. Even simple concepts cannot be explained clearly.

Don't Expect a Detailed Explanation of MPEG2 Video (1999-07-15)

This book didn't live up to previous reviews. It's quite expensive at $95. The chapters compartmentalize subjects such as motion compensation modes and video coding which are not independent subjects, and they never tie these subjects together. I haven't found a block diagram of a video encoder anywhere in the book. The entire subject of MPEG2 video encoding is covered in one 25-page chapter (although there is a chapter on motion compensation as I mentioned, and there's a chapter on Video Stream Syntax and Semantics which is little more than a re-hash of the MPEG2 part 2 spec.). I've gotta believe there's something better out there. The "Techniques and Standards for Image Video and Audio Coding" by Rao/Hwang is a bit better.

A Practical Guide to Content Delivery Networks

With a practical and organized approach to learning and implementation, A Practical Guide to Content Delivery Networks presents a step-by-step process for building a highly available and highly scalable content delivery network (CDN). CDN refers to the infrastructure behind any service that provides utility or access to data to an end user. This book offers terminology, tactics, potential problems to avoid, and individual layers of design, providing clear understanding of the framework for CDNs using a structural and visual approach. The text emphasizes a best-of-breed strategy, allowing a technically sound CDN to be conceived and built on almost any budget.

Customes reviews 1

Good overall coverage of CDN technology (2006-09-26)

Gilbert Held has covered many aspects of CDN technology right from the basics to implementation. While i was more interested in finding out vendor specific details i found that this book covers some but not all of it.
I still think it's a good reference for Systems Architects, Dev Leads and IT Operations folks interested in off-loading content for large-scale e-commerce web sites.

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