Following on from the successful MPEG-2 standard, MPEG-4 Visual is enabling a new wave of multimedia applications from Internet video streaming to mobile video conferencing. The new H.264 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ standard promises impressive compression performance and is gaining support from developers and manufacturers. The first book to cover H.264 in technical detail, this unique resource takes an application-based approach to the two standards and the coding concepts that underpin them. Focussing on compression tools and profiles for practical multimedia applications, this book ‘decodes’ the standards, enabling developers, researchers, engineers and students to rapidly get to grips with both H.264 and MPEG-4 Visual.
Dr Iain Richardson leads the Image Communication Technology research group at the Robert Gordon University in Scotland and is the author of over 40 research papers and two previous books on video compression technology.