Customer Reviews

The MPEG Handbook, Second Edition

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This book covers a broad range of topics, some relevant to video and audio coding, some not (e.g. digital filters, Fourier transform, phase locked loop !). Key topics such as motion estimation and compensation are not clearly described. The information on the MPEG standards is disappointing, by my reckoning less than 1/3 of the book actually deals with MPEG. There is no mention of MP4 profiles/levels or MP4 systems.

The last 1/3 of the book serves as a good introduction to MPEG. All of the concepts and terminology definitions, can be found on the web, but it will take you days to find it all. This book is good if you want to save time looking thru useless web pages that may or may not be correct.

Worth the money? Depends on how valuable your time is.

The first 2/3's is mostly academic principles of sampling/transforms/compression. Engineering text book stuff.

Also, the book is very rough around the edges. Looks like a collection of stuff from different sources. The book jumps all over the place, and leaves things open ended at times.

Many video compression books start with a particular specification and then provide background to justify the decisions made in defining the specification. This book approaches video compression starting from scientific principles and building on those towards describing the decisions made in digital compression standards. It describes the history of common analog video formats and proceeds to a solid overview of the MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 digital video compression formats.

Many video compression books completely disregard or gloss over audio. This one includes audio compression with the same complete treatment given to video. The book covers MPEG layer 1-3 audio, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC, and Dolby AC-3.

This book is complete, has no obvious typos, is logically organized, and contains many useful diagrams.