This text offers information on recent developments in standards activities (JPEG-LS, MPEG-4, MPEG-7, and H263) and provides a comprehensive review of activities on multimedia enhanced processors, multimedia co-processors, and dedicated processors, including examples from industry. The book is an introduction to the algorithms and architectures that form the underpinnings of the image and video compressions standards, including JPEG (compression of still-images), H261 and H263 (video teleconferencing), and MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (video storage and broadcasting). The next generation of audiovisual coding standards, such as MPEG-4 and MPEG-7, are also briefly described. In addition, the book covers the MPEG and Dolby AC-3 audio coding standards and emerging techniques for image and video compression, such as those based on wavelets and vector quantization. Emphasizing the foundations of these standards is another feature; namely, techniques such as predictive coding, transform-based coding such as the discrete cosine transform (DCT), motion estimation, motion compensation, and entropy coding, as well as how they are applied in the standards.
The implementation details of each standard are avoided; however, the book provides material necessary to understand the workings of each of the compression standards, including information that can be used by the reader to evaluate the efficiency of various software and hardware implementations conforming to these standards. Particular emphasis is placed on those algorithms and architectures that have been found to be useful in practical software or hardware implementations.