I have had Rainbow Runner Studio for more than a year (stopped using the toy!) and I was always puzzled by the compression list where I find something called MPEG4 compression. Has anyone heard of or even used MPEG4 higspeed compression? I have never seen anything written about it, so can anyone enlighten me, please?
Kaare Nilsen, Norway
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Kaare Nilsen
I believe that it is a version of MPEG that is orientated to transmission. More along the lines of web broadcasting.
John Ferrick
I have a few documents on this, but here is a summary:
1. Scope and features of the MPEG-4 standard
The MPEG-4 standard under development will provide a set of technologies to satisfy the needs of authors, service providers and end users alike.
· For authors, MPEG-4 will enable the production of content that has far greater reusability, has greater flexibility than is possible today with individual technologies such as digital television, animated graphics, World Wide Web (WWW) pages and their extensions. Also, it will be possible to better manage and protect content owner rights
· For network service providers MPEG-4 will offer transparent information which will be interpreted and translated into the appropriate native signaling messages of each network with the help of relevant standards bodies having the appropriate jurisdiction. However the foregoing excludes QoS considerations, for which MPEG-4 will provide a generic QoS parameter set for different MPEG-4 media. The exact mapping for these translations are beyond the scope of MPEG-4 and are left to be defined by network providers. Signaling of the QoS information end-to-end, will enable transport optimization in heterogeneous networks.
· For end users, MPEG-4 will allow higher levels of interaction with content, within the limits set by the author, avoiding the risk of proprietary formats and players.
MPEG-4 achieves these goals by providing standardized ways to:
1. represent units of aural, visual or audiovisual content, called "audio/visual objects" or AVOs. (The very basic unit is more precisely called a "primitive AVO");
2. compose these objects together to create compound audiovisual objects that form audiovisual scenes;
3. multiplex and synchronize the data associated with AVOs, so that they can be transported over network channels providing a QoS appropriate for the nature of the specific AVOs; and
4. interact with the audiovisual scene generated at the receiver’s end.
John Ferrick
Well.....and what does all this mean in practical terms, John??? I aksed this question once before, about a year ago, about MPEG4 and the answer was "a military standard not used for public use, never meant for public use". Is this correct?
And why on earth is this standard included in such a low-end card like Rainbow Runner Studio???
Kaare
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Kaare Nilsen
MPEG groups are only loosely tied together by possible common user requirements. MPEG2 has over 20 different 'profiles/levels' which are only very loosely 'broadcast' quality. MPEG1 is loosely CDROM quality, MPEG3 got incorporated into 2, and MPEG4 is loosely very low data rates. I believe it was originally intended to be for 'video phone' type use, but video conferencing and web video will also benefit from these classes of compression.
MPEG4 generally offers very good trade-off on file size vs quality. Under Windows its main use is for Microsoft's NetShow media (ASF extension) and 'Windows Media On Demand Producer' which has been co-developed with Sonic Foundry. You should be able to use this codec from any NLE software if you wish.