[streaming] OT: H.264 support and .3gp

[Marshall Eubanks]

On Jul 28, 2008, at 1:08 PM, Warren Young wrote:

> Yusuf Mayet wrote:
>>
>> What does MPEG-4 refer/mean to?
>
> MPEG-4 is a huge, unruly bag of technologies.  I don't know of a  
> single
> software package that implements *all* of MPEG-4.  See:
>
> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpeg-4
> 	http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/achievements.htm
>
> Colloquially, when you see "MPEG-4" given with no other qualifiers  
> in a
> video context, MPEG-4 typically refers to MPEG-4 Part 2, the original
> video encoding method defined for the MPEG-4 family.  Part 2 was a  
> mess,
> from a standards perspective.  It specified far more than has ever  
> been
> actually put into practice, and the video only parts splintered  
> through
> proprietary extensions like DivX and Microsoft's MPEG-4v3, perhaps
> because as-is it isn't dramatically better than MPEG-2.
>
> H.264 was added to the MPEG-4 family a few years after the initial  
> parts
> of MPEG-4 were standardized; it is also called MPEG-4 Part 10.  Part  
> 10
> is a much more focused standard than Part 2, covering just video.  It
> takes the ideas in the video parts of MPEG-4 Part 2 and extends them
> further, making it valuable enough in terms of coding efficiency to  
> woo
> many more people away from MPEG-2 and proprietary codecs than Part 2
> could.  It is likely that over the next few years, H.264 will crush  
> Part
> 2: it won't be used for new products, and old Part 2 products will
> either be updated to use H.264 instead, or will be allowed to slide  
> into
> obsolescence.
>
>> Is'nt is just the container,
>
> That's yet another confusing part about MPEG-4: it defines at least
> three different "container" formats.  There are program and transport
> streams (Part 1) similar to those of MPEG-2, then there is the  
> QuickTime
> variant defined in Part 12, which is often associated with H.264, but
> not actually tied to it.

The "Quicktime" variant is actually RTP, and is fully standards  
compliant.

Don't forget too that the 3GPPx standards for streaming are define two  
additional
containers, with 3GPP and 3GPP2 both containing otherwise standard  
MPEG-4 part 2 and AAC
streams.

Regards
Marshall


>
>
>> Can anyone explain the difference between MPEG-4 and H.264.
>
> John Watkinson can:
> http://www.amazon.com/MPEG-Handbook-Second-John-Watkinson/dp/024080578X/
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