Brief Overview of Compression Standards

JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group)

It is a compression standard for still images. It is used as an intraframe codec for the I-
frames of MPEG.
Compression ratio ranges from 10:1 to 20:1 (without visible loss).

JPEG2000
It is wavelet transformation-based (as opposed to JPEG which is spatial transform DCT-
based).
Compression ratio is 25:1.

MPEG-1 (Moving Picture Expert Group-phase 1, 1992)

Designed for the storage and retrieval of moving pictures and audio on storage media.
It is a coding standard for applications requiring video resolutions of approximately 360 x
240 pixels per frame frame rates of 24 – 30 frames/sec leading to uncompressed bit rate
of up to 10 Mbps.
It defines 3 layers for audio incorporating the same basic models, but the codec
complexity increases with each layer.
The compression ratio for visual data ranges from 50:1 to 100:1.
The compression ratio for layer 1 audio is 4:1, for layer 2 audio is 6:1, and for layer 3
audio is 12:1.

MPEG-2 (phase 2, 1994)

Designed for digital cable television (CATV) and satellite broadcasting. MPEG-2 is the
codec of high definition television (HDTV).
It is a standard for the digital coding of video and associated audio at bit rates up to 10
Mbps.
The compression ratio is several 100’s to 1, depending on the quality requirement.

MPEG-4 or H.264 (1998-1999)

It is the multimedia standard for the fixed and mobile web enabling the integration of
multiple paradigms (models) of the fields of interactive multimedia, mobile multimedia,
interactive graphics and enhanced digital television.
MPEG-4 uses arithmetic coding as its entropy coder (as opposed to MPEG-1 and 2 which use
Huffman coding).
The compression ratio ranges from 100:1 to 1000:1. The highest ever attainable CR was
2400:1.

MPEG-7 or MPEG-21
It is not a newer phase of compression. It provides a standardized data model for access
to and management of MPEG 1/2/4 digital media streams in storage and real-time
delivery applications. MPEG-7 has further added-performance in its platform, security,
high performance scalability and error robustness features.
MPEG-7 provides support to a broad range of applications:
 Broadcast media selection (e.g., radio channel, TV channel).
 Digital libraries (e.g., image catalogue, musical dictionary, bio-medical imaging
catalogues, film, video and radio archives).
 E-Commerce (e.g., personalized advertising, on-line catalogues, directories of e-shops).
 Education (e.g., repositories of multimedia courses, multimedia search for support material).
 Home Entertainment (e.g., systems for the management of personal multimedia collections,
including manipulation of content, e.g. home video editing, searching a game, karaoke).
 Investigation services (e.g., human characteristics recognition, forensics).
 Journalism (e.g. searching speeches of a certain politician using his name, his voice or his face).
 Multimedia directory services (e.g. yellow pages, tourist information, geographical
information systems).
 Multimedia editing (e.g., personalized electronic news service, media authoring).
 Remote sensing (e.g., cartography, ecology, natural resources management).
 Shopping (e.g., searching for clothes that you like).
 Social (e.g. dating services).
 Surveillance (e.g., traffic control, security …)

MP3
It is a layer 3 audio MPEG (phase 1 or 2) codec.
The compression ratio is 10:1.

DivX
It is a combination of MPEG-4 for video (CR = 100:1) and MP3 for audio (CR = 10:1).

HDTV (High Definition Television)

The firs all-digital HDTV system, DigiCipher, was proposed by General Instruments (GI)
in 1990. This was followed by DSC_HDTV from Zenith, AT&T, and Scientific Atlanta,
and by CCDC-HDTV from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and GI.
Its uncompressed data rate is 1.5Gbps. The codec is asymmetric (coder bears most of the
cost). It is implemented using MPEG-2.
US broadcast HDTV requires a compression ratio of 51:1 to fit through a 6 MHz TV
broadcasting channel.

H.263 (older version H.261)

It is a standard for the compression of videoconferencing signals.
The codec is symmetric (coder and decoder bears equal cost).
[H.261 is the older standard. In the early 90’s, CCITT (currently ITU-T) standardized a
coding algorithm for video telephony and video conferencing at bit rates ranging from 64
Kbits/s to 41.92 Mbits/s.]
The compression ratio is 100:1 and the codec performance (QoS-CR tradeoff) is
comparable to MPEG-4.
 Table 1: The compression ratio of various compression standards.
Compression Standard Compression Ratio
JPEG 10:1 – 20:1
JPEG2000 25:1
Visual data 50:1 – 100:1
MPEG-1 Layer 1 audio 4:1
Layer 2 audio 6:1
Layer 3 audio 12:1
MPEG-2 Several 100s:1
MPEG-4 100:1 – 1000:1 (highest ever 2400:1)
MP3 10:1
DivX Video 100:1
Audio 10:1
HDTV 51:1
H.263 100:1