MPEG-4 systems, concepts and implementation

Abstract

After a decade from its origin MPEG, with its current MPEG-4 project, is now facing the challenge of providing a future-proof multimedia toolkit which aims at incorporating new and emerging technologies while ensuring backward compatibility with its previous and successful audio-visual standards. This paper provides an overview of the standard focusing mainly on the system aspects that, by their nature, represent the most peculiar features of the future specifications which are scheduled to become an International Standard by the beginning of year 1999. The paper first briefly introduces the MPEG standards focusing on the MPEG-4 Systems and DMIF part of the specification. An extensive presentation is given encompassing the main layers of the Systems/DMIF architecture: the Systems layer and the Delivery layer. Additional details on the subject are provided as the final part of the paper is devoted to the description of a software implementation featuring the concepts of the standard. This section is complemented by examples which give concrete insights on the potential of the standard.