Differences between current version and predecessor to the previous major change of MPEGTerminology.
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| Newer page: | version 10 | Last edited on Sunday, January 10, 2010 10:36:43 am | by LawrenceDoliveiro | |
| Older page: | version 8 | Last edited on Saturday, January 9, 2010 7:19:56 pm | by LawrenceDoliveiro | Revert |
@@ -3,9 +3,9 @@
“Streams” in MPEG are actually called ''packetized elementary streams'' (PES), because the data is divided up into ''packets'', each of which begins with a ''PES header''. Each PES header can contain a ''presentation time stamp'' (PTS) which synchronizes the time at which that data is to be decoded and presented to the viewer, along with corresponding data from the other streams.
Not every PES packet has to have a PTS, but there must be at least one every 0.7 seconds, in order to ensure the decoder clock stays in sync. The PTS is a 33-bit unsigned integer, in units of a 90kHz clock.
-A
packet belonging to one stream (say, video) will invariably be immediately followed by one belonging to another stream (say, audio), with around the same PTS. This interleaving or ''multiplexing'' of data from different streams minimizes the amount of buffering the decoder has to implement in order to provide smoothly synchronized playback.
+In a typical movie file, a
packet belonging to one stream (say, video) will invariably be immediately followed by one belonging to another stream (say, audio), with around the same PTS. This interleaving or ''multiplexing'' of data from different streams minimizes the amount of buffering the decoder has to implement in order to provide smoothly synchronized playback.
MPEG defines standard stream types for audio and video. Besides these, it also allows for ''padding'' streams (the contents of which are ignored by the decoder), and ''private'' streams, not further specified by MPEG itself. For instance, [DVDVideo] defines meanings for the contents of particular private streams.
An MPEG file/bytestream could just consist of an unadorned sequence of PES packets, but this is not usually done. Instead, MPEG is normally represented in either ''transport stream'' (MPEG-TS) or ''program stream''(MPEG-PS) formats.
@@ -16,4 +16,7 @@
Optionally following the pack header, there can be a ''[system header|http://www.mpucoder.com/DVD/sys_hdr.html]''. This specifies such things as how many audio and video streams there are, how much bandwidth they might need, and whether audio and video are in fact synchronized to the system clock. The first pack in the file must have a system header. This can be repeated at intervals throughout the file, but it must always have the same contents.
Note that, apart from the requirement for the presence of a system header, there is no special header at the start of an MPEG file/bytestream. This means it is in principle possible to concatenate two or more MPEG files together to achieve a playable result, provided that 1) there are no leftover bytes after the end of the last packet in each file, and 2) the player can cope with any resultant discontinuities in the progression of the PTS.
+
+!See Also
+* [draft specs|http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ece796/documents/] for MPEG and some other things.
