What's up next? To send video at very low bitrates (less than about 64 kbits/s), for sending video over mobile networks, etc., MPEG started working on a very low bitrate video codec, under the name MPEG-4. Before achieving acceptable image quality at such bitrates, new demands arose. These were mainly caused by the requirements of multimedia, where there was a considerable demand for coding of multiviewpoint scenes, graphic and synthetic as well as natural scenes. Applications such as virtual studio and interactive video were the main driving forces. MPEG-4 images are coded as objects, and the generated bit-stream is scalable, providing the possibility of interacting with video, choosing the parts which are of interest. Moreover, natural images can be mixed with synthetic video, in what is called virtual studio. MPEG-4 defines a new coding method based on models of objects for coding synthetic objects.

• Coding at low bitrates is needed for sending video over mobile networks, etc. Solution - MPEG-4 which uses wavelet transforms
• There is an increasing demand for multiangle scenes (like the Trinity Kick scene in The Matrix), graphics, synthetic/natural scenes
• Near future - MPEG-7, `content-based encoding'
• Main functions of MPEG-7: to define a search engine for multimedia content search and video browsing

Go to the next page, or use one of the following quick links:

Main Page
Motivation For Compression - Some True Stories
A Brief History of Compression (heheh - brief, compress... get it?)
Requirements From Any Compression Algorithm
Data Compression Fundamentals
Some Compression Techniques
Video Compression Techniques: The MPEG-1 Standard
The Future: MPEG-4 And MPEG-7
Related Links
 
 
 

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Copyright © Sundar Srinivasan 2002