DigitalVideoAndHDTVAlgorithmsAndInterfaces.pdf

Gibson, Jerry D., Toby Berger, Tom
Lookabaugh, David Lindbergh, and
Richard L. Baker, Digital Compression
for Multimedia (San Francisco:
Morgan Kaufmann, 1998).
Watkinson, John, MPEG-2 (Oxford:
Focal Press, 1999).
Mitchell, Joan L., and William B.
Pennebaker, Chad E. Fogg, and
Didier J. LeGall, MPEG Video
Compression Standard (New York:
Chapman & Hall, 1997). [This
book concentrates on MPEG-1.
Egregiously incorrect information
appears concerning chroma
subsampling.]
Haskell, Barry G., Atul Puri, and
Arun N. Netravali, Digital Video: An
Introduction to MPEG-2 (New York:
Chapman & Hall, 1997). [This
book fails to distinguish luminance
and luma; both are called
luminance and given the symbol
Y. See Appendix A, YUV and
luminance considered harmful, on
page 595.]
An MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) is intended for transmission
of multiple programs on relatively error-prone
media. (For terrestrial or cable television, TS packets are
expected to be suitably protected.) A transport stream
packet (TSP) comprises 188 bytes – a 4-byte header
(whose first byte has the value 47 h ), and 184 bytes of
payload. Packet size was designed with ATM in mind:
One TS packet fits into four ATM cells. Synchronization
is achieved through multiple independent program clock
references (PCRs). Because there is a lack of external
interfaces for program streams, a single program transport
stream (SPTS) may be used to carry one program.
Further reading
On page 126, I cited the introduction to compression
by Peter Symes.
Lookabaugh’s chapter in Digital Compression for
Multimedia provides an excellent 55-page description
of MPEG-2. His chapter also covers MPEG audio.
Watkinson introduces MPEG-2 video and audio.
The book by Mitchell and her colleagues contains
detailed coverage of MPEG-1; the book by Haskell and
his colleagues provides detailed treatment of MPEG-2.
I’m sorry to say that both of these books contain errors.
Few books are free from errors! However, neither of
these has published errata, and for that reason, they are
best used as guides to the standard itself rather than as
definitive references.
496 DIGITAL VIDEO AND HDTV ALGORITHMS AND INTERFACES