OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this project are to investigate on file formats such as MPEG, MOV and AVI and on topics related to Video Streaming Applications etc, Noise in Video Signals and others related to Internet Video Transmission. Finally one format is selected for further analysis and that is the AVI format since it is mainly used as an extension to video on the Internet. It is most oftenly encountered than MPEG or MOV.
The experiment looks at the main video codecs (Compressors/Decompressors) which are in use today and are mainly used to compress an AVI format video to realise their advantages and disadvantages. The 'Quality of the video', 'Storage requirements', 'Data-rate or channel bandwidth for transmission' and 'Compression timing' is looked at and conclusions made.
Firstly, the 'Original' video file can be seen below which is compressed slightly (under 1.38MB) so that it could be put on the net (uploading files must be equal to or less than 1MB, said by service provider 'Fortunecity') and be portable to be carried on a floppy diskette to and from the University. This is then recompressed by the various video codecs to produce video samples that can be looked at and compared to the original.
It can be seen that the download time for the videos is quite high at times therefore alternative links have been provided for a faster overview of the videos produced by the codecs where 4 frames of each video can be seen. You can either wait and see the video or follow links to instantly see the frames of each video to see the differences.
PLEASE NOTE: To enable motion playback, move the cursor over the video.
(Quicker overview of the video with 4 various stills)
The following video samples were used during the analysis of the video codecs which yielded the results shown in the 'END-RESULTS' section. Firstly, the main video codecs under investigation are stated below:
The 'CINEPAK CODEC by Radius' did not allow further reconstruction's of the 'Original' video due to some cause not known therefore it is only mentioned and the video which it produced compressed at some unknown ratio is also shown. However, this particular codec is not included in the comparison stage since this would result in an inaccurate conclusion. The video is compressed at ratios 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%.
The generated video samples or video still frames that were used during the analysis can be seen in motion by clicking on the appropriate links below:
VIDEO
VIDEO FRAMES
4 FRAMES FROM THE VIDEO SAMPLE
The MPEG-4 compressor used in this analysis is actually a H.263 standard codec and is a subset of the actual MPEG-4 that is out now.
The MPEG-4 videos are not included here due to some problem which does not allow the video to be viewed while playback is in progress. This problem occurs only when the video is downloaded onto the website via internet. During the experiments while playing the video through any AVI video player, there were no problems.
Nevertheless, 4 frames of the MPEG4 video version can be seen at different compression ratios by clicking on the links further down in the frames section.
VIDEOS
VIDEOS
( NOT AVAILABLE )
REFER TO MPEG-4 VIDEO FRAMES BELOW TO SEE THE QUALITY.
VIDEOS
The video frames can be seen by clicking on the appropriate links below where 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% samples for each codec are shown alongside each other so that making a comparison becomes easier.
VIDEO FRAMES
Copyright 1999 by Irfan Rashid. All Rights Reserved.