Migrating from MPEG-2 Video to MPEG-4 AVC

Due to the large savings in bandwidth that MPEG-4 AVC compression provides over MPEG-2 Video, content providers are now, or soon will be, migrating to MPEG-4 AVC for distribution to local broadcasters and service providers, as well as for contribution backhauls. MPEG-4 AVC enables improved picture quality of existing services or additional services to be provided, or a combination of both. Migrating to MPEG-4 AVC introduces many changes to the programmer's infrastructure. The “HD challenge” is discussed, along with a review of how MPEG-4 AVC compression improves upon MPEG-2 Video. DVB-S2 modulation is overviewed and the bandwidth efficiency gains one obtains when it is combined with MPEG-4 AVC compression is explained. Migration issues to consider are discussed including the support of legacy MPEG-2 Video receive sites and the impact of multiple decode/encode stages (concatenation).

Published

2010-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Migrating from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC, bandwidth efficiency, DVB-S2, MPEG-4 AVC, transcoding receiver, transcoder, compression concatenation effects

DOI

10.5594/M001391

ISBN

978-1-61482-944-7