Video Codec Design: Developing Image and Video Compression Systems (Hardcover)

~ Iain Richardson (Author) "Digital video is now an integral part of many aspects of business, education and entertainment, from digital TV to web-based video news..." (more)
Key Phrases: errored region, reconstructed image block, quantiser step size, San Jose, Video Coding Experts Group (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book deserves to be in every university library and it would be excellent as a course text. Also, if you have even a passing understanding of signal processing and want to know more, it's a great read--VISUAL SYSTEMS JOURNAL, JUNE 2002

Product Description

Video compression coding is the enabling technology behind a new wave of communication applications. From streaming internet video to broadcast digital television and digital cinema, the video codec is a key building block for a host of new multimedia applications and services. Video Codec Design sets out to de-mystify the subject of video coding and present a practical, design-based approach to this emerging field.

Featuring:

• Guidance on the practical design and implementation of video coding technology.

• Explanation of the major video coding standards, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263 and H.26L.

• Detailed coverage of key video coding techniques and core algorithms.

• Examination of critical design issues including transmission, Quality of Service and processing platforms.

• A wealth of illustrations and practical examples, including quantitative comparisons of design alternatives.

Video Codec Design provides communications engineers, system designers, researchers and technical managers with an essential handbook to image and video compression technology. The clear presentation and emphasis on real-life examples make this book an excellent teaching tool for computer science and electronic engineering instructors.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (May 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471485535
• ISBN-13: 978-0471485537
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #873,349 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Definately NOT The Best Video Book So Far, January 29, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Video Codec Design - Developing Image and Video Compression Systems (Paperback)

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't be fooled by the title of this book., January 19, 2004

By	A reader works in image & video coding (Edmonton, Canada) - See all my reviews

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Video Codec Design by Iaian E.G. Richardson., September 27, 2009

By	Pol Madamba - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

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