Deliverable E:

Information about resources for content production

Leader: Karakoussis Apostolos, GRNET
Contributors: All



Table of Contents

  1. Purpose of this document
  2. Media Architectures/Systems/Formats
    1. MPEG
    2. Windows Media
    3. RealMedia
    4. QuickTime
    5. References
  3. Software and Hardware Solutions
    1. Software
    2. Hardware
  4. Best Practices/Tutorials
  5. Glossary of Terms
  6. Miscellaneous Links





1. Purpose of this document

The purpose of this document is to provide online resources concerning content production so that anyone interested can quickly find answers to questions that might rise in the process of content production.

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2. Media Architectures/Systems/Formats

MPEG

  1. What is MPEG

    The Moving Picture Experts Group is a working group of ISO/IEC in charge of the development of international standards for compression, decompression, processing, and coded representation of moving pictures, audio and their combination. Thus far this working group has produced the following standards: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-7, and MPEG-21. More information about the MPEG standards and the expert group can be found at MPEG.org .
    -- SURFnet - SURFworks Glossary of terms

  2. MPEG Formats
    • MPEG-1

      The MPEG-1 (ISO 11172) standard targets a bandwidth of 1-1.5 Mbps offering VHS quality video at CIF (352x288) resolution and 30 frames per second. MPEG-1 requires expensive hardware for real-time encoding. While decoding can be done in software, most implementations consume a large fraction of a high-end processor. MPEG-1 does not offer resolution scalability and the video quality is highly susceptible to packet loss.
      -- SURFnet - SURFworks Glossary of terms

    • MPEG-2

      The MPEG-2 (ISO 13818) standard extends MPEG-1 by including support for higher resolution video and increased audio capabilities. MPEG-2 targets a bandwidth of 8 to 15 Mbps providing broadcast quality full-screen video. Compared with MPEG-1, it requires even more expensive hardware to encode and decode. It is also prone to poor video quality in the presence of packet-loss, for the same reasons as MPEG-1.
      -- SURFnet - SURFworks Glossary of terms

    • MPEG-4

      The underlying intention of the MPEG-4 (ISO 14496) standard is to provide an audio and video compression scheme suitable for video conferencing at data rates less then 64 kbps. Another important MPEG-4 feature is flexible, highly interactive access to and manipulation of audio-visual data by the end-users. The standard however is still young (version 1 became a standard in 1999) and under development. Microsoft uses a MPEG-4 based codec called Microsoft MPEG-4 Video codec v3 in its WindowsMedia streaming solution and the Internet Streaming Media Alliance has created a more standard approach. A whitepaper about MPEG-4 can be found at the Optibase Web-site .
      -- SURFnet - SURFworks Glossary of terms

  • More Information



Windows Media

Windows Media is Microsofts' solution to both stored and live streaming video content. Various configurations allow acceptable quality for video and audio at 128-512kbits/s

RealMedia/Helix

RealMedia is RealNetworks' solution to both stored and live streaming. Helix is the name of the portion of the system that the company recently made available to the public including the source code.


QuickTime

QuickTime is Apple's multi-platform, industry-standard, multimedia software architecture.




References

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3. Software and Hardware Solutions

Software Solutions

Hardware Solutions

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4. Best Practices/Tutorials

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5. Glossary of Terms

    1. SURFnet - SURFworks Glossary of terms

    2. http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/video/glossary.html

    3. http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/video/analog_film_and__video.htm
      --analog video standards

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6. Miscellaneous Links

    1. http://www.washington.edu/hdtv/
      --University of Washington effort for streaming HDTV over the Internet

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