MPEG-4

1. MPEG-4 Cedar Wingate MUMT 621 Slide Presentation I Professor Ichiro Fujinaga September 24, 2009

2. 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)

3. Goals • Designed to scale down • Originally designed as a teleconferencing tool • Dial-up internet bandwidths • Small devices. i.e. cell phones and PDAs

4. 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)

5. 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

6. 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

7. Parts • Many additions to MPEG-4 • 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) • 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 onJOpenType • Part 23: Symbolic Music Representation (SMR)

8. 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)

9. Bibliography • 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). • Doom9 Forum contributors. “MP4 FAQ.” Doom9’s Forum. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62723 (accessed September 22, 2009). • Jacobs, Stephen. “Start at the beginning: An MPEG Timeline.” Streaming Media, http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=7472 (accessed September 22, 2009). • 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) • 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) • MPEG-4 Industry Forum contributor. (B) “What is MPEG-4?” MPEG Industry Forum. http://www.mpegif.org/mpeg4/ (accessed September 22, 2009) • Wikipedia contributors. “MPEG-4.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4 (accessed September 22, 2009). • 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). • Zoia, Giorgio. "MPEG Technologies: Structured Audio."  International Organisation for Standardisation. http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/technologies/mp04-sa/index.htm (accessed September 22, 2009)