Elements of a New Authoring System for Digital Video Disk (DVD)

The realization of DVD, Digital Video (Versatile) Disk, requires an authoring system to process the video, audio, sub-picture, and other program material before a disk can be made. Special DVD program material such as sub-picture, and the functions of a new DVD authoring system are presented. — The authoring system is composed of four functional elements; scenario converter, source encoder, pre-mastering, and checker. The functions of these elements are described in the paper. — The scenario converter element permits introduction of “navigation” data to program material so the viewer may interact with, and control program playback. — The source encoder element utilizes various compressed and non-compressed coding methods to encode video, audio and sub-picture. — The pre-mastering process creates a data stream conforming to compression system, and DVD format standards. Data stream checking includes playback emulation and verification of the data. — DVD offers new presentation display functions such as multi-point of view selection, and “pan and scan” picture area selection for wide screen programs. The authoring system permits these functions to be included in the DVD data. — The authoring system employs a new rate control method for variable bit rate encoding that yields both best picture quality and optimal fit of all data on the DVD disk. A two pass video encoding method has been developed to first analyze the program material, and then optimize the VBR rate control during the final encoding process. — The authoring system includes processes that thoroughly check and verify the data stream before it is recorded on the DVD disk.

Published

1996-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00129

ISBN

978-1-61482-925-6