 |
Book Review
The MPEG-4 Book, edited by Fernando Pereira and Touradj Ebrahimi, Prentice Hall, 2003, ISBN: 0-13-061621-4.
Reviewed by Vladimir Botchev [vladimir.botchev@analog.com]
I wish every big and complicated standard had a book like this to back it up. The book is not a tutorial, though—at least not in the manner of another wonderful text, Ghanbari’s Video Coding, an Introduction to Standard Codecs. To understand and get the most from The MPEG-4 Book, the reader has to be knowledgeable in image compression and the basics of MPEG. The authors review in depth most aspects of the Standard, dwelling at length on a few recent esoteric areas like video and audio SNHC tools and techniques, for which there are, at present, not many comprehensive references. The book also provides a very good historical overview of the standardization process for MPEG-4 (based in fact on first-hand knowledge); it is very helpful in understanding why certain technical decisions were taken in preference to exploring other alternatives.
It is not easy to produce a coherent picture of complicated matters such as MPEG-4. For example, in other complex areas, such as ADSL, books published with the intent of being helpful have failed to do so, because they just kept rephrasing the standard texts. A recent book on JPEG-2000, which confuses more than it helps, is a well-known example of such a failure. Thus the many authors of The MPEG-4 book have done a brilliant job, humanizing terminology and explaining details for implementation. Interestingly, the places where the reader will find the most substantial amounts of theory are the chapters on audio coding. AAC and TwinVQ are remarkably well-presented, given the small number of pages devoted to them. The last three chapters, on audio and video validation testing, and the reference software, are good enough for a separate booklet that would belong in the workplace of every developer involved in MPEG. The same could be said about the audio/video/graphics profiles, prepared as appendixes to the main text.
In conclusion, this is the most complete and up-to-date reference book on MPEG-4, written by experts willing (and succeeding) to explain in depth rather than just state the facts of the matter. It is highly recommended as a reference text for developers and people that have to maintain MPEG implementations, as well as a study guide and bridge between theory and practice.
Reminder:
The 1966 Philbrick Classic:
Applications Manual for Computing Amplifiers for Modeling, Measuring, Manipulating, and Much Else
is now available on the Analog Dialogue web site.
Copyright 1995- Analog Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.