Customer Reviews

Video Codec Design: Developing Image and Video Compression Systems

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This book attempts to tell you everything about all the video
compression standards in less than 300 pages. Now does that
really sound possible ?

It was obviously put together this way to appeal to the widest
possible audience, and therefore dilutes its content on each
of the individual coding standards (MPEG-1,2,4 H.263, H.264)
to the point of being useless.

JPEG gets a disproportionate 5 pages, which is not video really,
and then MPEG-2 gets 3 pages and MPEG-4 1 page. Then H.261
H.263 and H.26L are grouped together and are discussed in 13
pages.

Then the book goes into Motion Estimation/Compensation, but
of course it's presented as a generic subject not specific
to any of the standards, which is okay for the pure ME part
but the various encoding modes of the individual standards
are lost (hey, isn't this a HUGE part of understanding
video compression ?).

Rate control, the brains of the video codec, is glossed over.
There is a brief intro to Rate-Distortion theory which doesn't
mention clearly that this is impractical from an implementation
standpoint, and then a brief rehash of TM5 for MPEG-2 and TM8
for H.263.

So far, the only decent book I've found on video compression
(where my interest has been MPEG-2) is "Techniques and Standards
for Image, Video and Audio Coding" by Rao and Hwang.

Then again, I haven't found a thing in any of these books that
you cannot find on the web for free that is much better.

This book belongs to the kind that gives you highest expectation before strongest disappointment.

Implied by its title, I bet most people will presume it focuses on the DESIGN of a video codec, not a REVIEW of various techniques in standards.

Unfortunately, only Chap. 13 has sth to do with DESIGN.

This book may be useful for people who do not know much about video coding, but it's not for people who looks for information on how to design a video codec.

From my experience, open source/free software packages, like MPEG4IP, MPEG2encode/decode, TMN H.263 codec, and standards documentation will offer much much more for a reader interested in DESIGN.

Not recommended because the title is too misleading.

I used this book as our reference textbook for a Digital Compression Course I took a few years ago. It had a good writeup on subjective quality measurement using the double stimulus continuous quality scale (DSCQS) method and objective quality measurement using PSNR. Also it's a good reference for video coding standards such as JPEG, MPEG, and for basic compression techniques such as vector quantization and Huffman coding. Pol Madamba (Review For Video Codec Design: Developing Image and Video Compression Systems by Iaian E.G. Richardson)Video Codec Design: Developing Image and Video Compression Systems

I bought many video related technical books, and I have to say this is the best one on video compression. My other favourite book is: "Video Demystified, 3rd Edition" on the general subject of video technology.

This book not only introduces theory and mathematical backgroups for video coding, but also explains to you the "why" in an easy-to-understand manner. The book also summarizes a lot of practical techniques that people developed during the recent years when implementating some of video coding algorithms.

It is not the amount of information presented in this book that attacted me, it is the way the author introducing those concepts that really brought my interest. Once you have the interest established and the necessary backgroup, you can now go search the internet for all detail video compression information you need (MPEG1/2/4, H261/263/264 standards, fast ME algorithms, rate-distortion algorithm, source code, etc).

I also highly recommend this book as a senior undergrad text book on video coding.

If you a rookie in video codec design, you can get basic knowledge from this book. Basic algorithms are explaned in detail(Such as, DCT, Motion Estimation and Compensation,and Entropy Coding). Read this book and read source code you'll know a lot.

The book contains a good coverage of the material related to video CODECc design .This book deals with the intricacies of the video presents separate sections on key components of video CODECs and system design issues like motion estimation and compensation,transform coding, entropy coding, pre- and post-processing, distortion and complexity, transmission of coded video, and platforms.
Author provides a good online help in case of any confusion or doubts which is of immense help.