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MPEG4

lastmod 2018-08-17created 2014-03-1714 edits

MPEG-4 (ISO/IEC 14496) is a standard for transmitting and storing video and audio as digital data. Like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, it consists of systems, visual, audio, and file format specifications. However, when people say MPEG-4, they usually mean the visual part, which describes the video encoding method.

The Moving Picture Experts Group (the original meaning of MPEG), which maintains the standard, intended MPEG-4 to be the ultimate video/audio encoding standard, so it has grown into a huge standard covering 3D computer graphics, speech synthesis, and more. MPEG technologies are divided into specifications called parts, one per technology, and a new part is created whenever a new technology is adopted. It is still being extended; recently, for example, H.264 was standardized as MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC.

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Parts of MPEG-4

MPEG-4 consists of several standards called "parts", as follows.

  • Part 1 (ISO/IEC 14496-1): Systems: describes synchronization and multiplexing of video and audio.
  • Part 2 (ISO/IEC 14496-2): Visual: describes a compression codec for visual data (video, still textures, synthetic images, etc.). One of the many profiles of Part 2 is the Advanced Simple Profile (ASP).
  • Part 3 (ISO/IEC 14496-3): Audio: a compression codec for perceptual coding of audio signals, including various audio/speech coding tools such as variants of AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) (AAC, BSAC, TWINVQ).
  • Part 4 (ISO/IEC 14496-4): Conformance testing: describes procedures for testing conformance with the other parts of the standard.
  • Part 5 (ISO/IEC 14496-5): Reference software: provides software to demonstrate and clarify the parts of the standard.
  • Part 6 (ISO/IEC 14496-6): DMIF
  • Part 7 (ISO/IEC 14496-7): Optimized reference software: provides examples of how to make improved implementations. (See: Part 5).
  • Part 8 (ISO/IEC 14496-8): Carriage on IP networks: specifies how to carry MPEG-4 content over IP networks.
  • Part 9 (ISO/IEC 14496-9): Reference hardware: provides hardware designs to show how to implement the other parts of the standard.
  • Part 10 (ISO/IEC 14496-10): Advanced Video Coding: a codec for video signals called AVC, technically identical to the ITU-T H.264 standard.
  • Part 11 (ISO/IEC 14496-11): Scene description and application engine, called BIFS; can be used for 3D content, subtitles, etc.
  • Part 12 (ISO/IEC 14496-12): ISO base media file format: a file format for storing media content.
  • Part 13 (ISO/IEC 14496-13): Extensions for intellectual property management and protection (IPMP).
  • Part 14 (ISO/IEC 14496-14): MPEG-4 file format: a container file format for MPEG-4 content, based on Part 12.
  • Part 15 (ISO/IEC 14496-15): AVC file format: for storing Part 10 video, based on Part 12.
  • Part 16 (ISO/IEC 14496-16): Animation Framework eXtension (AFX).
  • Part 17 (ISO/IEC 14496-17): A format for timed subtitles.
  • Part 18 (ISO/IEC 14496-18): Font compression and streaming (OpenType fonts).
  • Part 19 (ISO/IEC 14496-19): Synthesized Texture Stream.
  • Part 20 (ISO/IEC 14496-20): LASeR (short for Lightweight Scene Representation)
  • Part 21 (ISO/IEC 14496-21): MPEG-J Graphics Framework eXtensions (GFX)
  • Part 22 (ISO/IEC 14496-22): Open Font Format Specification based on OpenType (OFFS)
  • Part 23 (ISO/IEC 14496-23): SMR (short for Symbolic Music Representation)
  • Part 24 (ISO/IEC 14496-24): defines the interaction between the MP4 file format and MPEG-4 Audio
  • Part 25 (ISO/IEC 14496-25): Compression standard for 3D graphics
  • Part 26 (ISO/IEC 14496-26): Audio conformance (being standardized)
  • Part 27 (ISO/IEC 14496-27): 3D Graphics conformance
  • Part 28 (ISO/IEC CD 14496-28): Composite font representation
  • Part 29 (ISO/IEC CD 14496-29): Under development (Web video coding)
  • Part 30 (ISO/IEC CD 14496-30): Under development (Web video coding - Part 30: Timed text and other visual overlays in ISO base media file format)

How to add a MOOV atom in a mp4 video file

Run qt_faststart to move the moov atom to the beginning of the stream. 

$ qt-faststart in.mp4 out.mp4

See also

  • MPEG
  • MPEG4IP: MPEG4IP provides an end-to-end system to explore streaming multimedia.
  • AtomicParsley: AtomicParsley is a lightweight command line program for reading, parsing and setting metadata into MPEG-4 files supporting these styles of metadata.
  • gpac: GPAC is an Open Source multimedia framework.
  • moovrelocator: PHP5 class to relocate the moov-atom from the end to the beginning of a MP4-file.

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References

  1. Mp4_vs_mpeg4.pdf ↩

  2. Wp_h264_31742_kr_0804_lo.pdf ↩

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