MPEG Handbook

Many video compression books start with a particular specification and then provide background to justify the decisions made in defining the specification. This book approaches video compression starting from scientific principles and building on those towards describing the decisions made in digital compression standards. It describes the history of common analog video formats and proceeds to a solid overview of the MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 digital video compression formats.Many video compression books completely disregard or gloss over audio. This one includes audio compression with the same complete treatment given to video. The book covers MPEG layer 1-3 audio, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AAC, and Dolby AC-3.This book is complete, has no obvious typos, is logically organized, and contains many useful diagrams.