What is MPEG-4?MPEG-4 (ISO 14496) is a broad Open Standard developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), a working group of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which also did the well known MPEG-1 (MP3, VCD) and MPEG-2 (DVD, SVCD) Standards, standardizing all sorts of audio/video compression formats and much more
By its nature the MPEG-4 Standard doesnt aim at standardizing one potential product (eg something comparable to DVD) but covers a broad range of Sub-Standards, which Product Providers can choose from to follow, according to what they need for their product
The MPEG-4 Standard, as mentioned, is divided into many different sub-standards, where for us users on Doom9 the following parts might be of major interest:
-
ISO 14496-1 (Systems), Animation/Interactivity (like DVD Menus)
-
ISO 14496-2 (Video), e.g. Advanced Simple Profile (ASP), as followed by XviD, DivX5, 3ivx...
-
ISO 14496-3 (Audio), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC)
-
ISO 14496-10 (Video), Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also known as H.264
-
ISO 14496-14 (Container), MP4 container format (uses the .mp4 extension)
-
ISO 14496-17 (Subtitles), MPEG-4 Timed Text subtitle format
This information thread now aims at providing some usefull infos on most of these parts, with a focus on MPEG-4 ASP and AVC/H.264
What are the possible advantages of an open standard, like MPEG-4, compared to closed formats, like Micro$oft's Windows Media?The good thing about an open standard is that its
open for everyone to follow when creating a product. therefore we already have a lot of different products which are compatible to the MPEG-4 Standard and are therefore also compatible to each other
Next to
interoperability and
big product range to choose from, an open standard leads to
competition, which means for the consumer that products in the competitive market will most likely have a better increase in
quality, lower
prices and a better focus on the consumers
needsbut not to forget and thats maybe the most important point for me:
an open standard allows
open source development, like we all know from XviD for example
