No. 288 (September 2001)

The MPEG Handbook

John Watkinson is arguably one of the most renowned authors in the area of broadcast systems engineering.  My memories go back more than ten years when two books he wrote first came into my hands.  The Art of Digital Audio and The Art of Digital Video.  During the 1990s, as we engineers developed and implemented Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), these two books became my vade-mecum.  Not only for me, almost all colleagues of mine who have been involved in rolling out digital technologies in Europe and worldwide have been constantly referring to them: they have become classical technical reference books.  They were probably the first comprehensive books on digital technologies.  And they remained valuable reference sources until today.

These two pioneering books had a profound and far-reaching impact on my further professional career, and my work in the EBU.

A few weeks ago, when visiting the IBC in Amsterdam, I was delighted to see John Watkinson’s new book, The MPEG Handbook, on the shelves of the bookstore in the technology exhibition area.  This book is a successor to his earlier book on MPEG-2, which was published only one year ago.  Due to the tremendous success of MPEG-4, the need arose to complement the MPEG-2 book with new evidence coming from MPEG-4 developments and practical implementations.

This new book is a must for each and every broadcast engineer.  It is actually several books in one.  The biggest value of the book is that it gives an excellent coverage of video and audio processing fundamentals: sampling, quantizing, coding, multiplexing, packetizing, digital filtering, transforms, and motion compensation.  This part is equally useful for newcomers, to form a good basic understanding, and practising engineers who wish to refresh their knowledge.

Chapters 4 and 5 represent the central part of the book.  They cover the specifics of MPEG audio and video compression, respectively.  The reader will understand better the evolutionary process, starting with MPEG-1, continuing with MPEG-2, skipping MPEG-3 and ending with MPEG-4.  The sections on MPEG-4 cover the video object types and their coding, mesh coding, animation, scalability, coding artefacts and other specific topics.

Chapter 6 discusses how MPEG streams can be multiplexed and transported.  Chapter 7 describes MPEG applications in television, communications (video phones!), DVDs (Digital Versatile Discs), PVRs (Personal Video Recorders), broadband networks and ATM, Internet, and FireWire (IEEE 1394).

The author’s in-depth understanding of the subject, his incredible skill in explaining complex matters in an easy-to-understand manner, the relevance and accuracy of the material covered, and his clear unambiguous writing style are distinguishable features that excel in this book.  Having understood the fundamentals provided by this book, the reader will be better armed to hammer out through the ISO MPEG standard itself.  He/she will, however, not be able to compose, for instance, MPEG-4 scenes and carry out other programming tasks that obviously require specific skills and lots of experience.

The MPEG technologies have already revolutionized broadcasting.  MPEG-2 has become the coding standard for DAB and DVB, which are both used worldwide.  MPEG-4 is likely to become a universal coding system for all delivery systems, including television and radio broadcasting, telecommunications and the Internet.  MPEG-4 is a very flexible system, which can be dynamically adjusted to different pipelines and different receiving terminals.  It is also more spectrum efficient than MPEG-2.

In the Internet environment, MPEG-4 is likely to become a viable commercial proposition.  Being an open source system, it may be able to supersede – in the mid term – the existing market leaders which dominate the Internet markets by using their proprietary systems such as Windows Media 8, RealNetworks 8 and QuickTime (Sorenson 3)

In digital broadcasting, however, the situation is more complex.  MPEG-4 comes into a mature MPEG-2 market, with millions and millions of MPEG-2 decoders and set-top boxes having rolled out in the market.  To this end, MPEG-4 is unlikely to replace MPEG-2 as a mainstream broadcasting system in the foreseeable future.  Nevertheless, MPEG-4 may be seen as a complementary system, which could carry some ancillary services such as video clips, games, 3D graphics, etc., which are embedded in the main MPEG-2 transport stream.

No book can claim to be a definitive book on a given technology.  Technologies develop too fast.  This book, however, deserves to be acclaimed as the definitive book on general MPEG aspects.

MPEG technologies, MPEG-4 in particular, are evolving further.  New profiles are being added to MPEG-4, such as ITU-T codec H26L.  Furthermore, the MPEG family is being extended by new “MPEG-X” members.  For example, MPEG-7 is dealing with metadata and content descriptions.  MPEG-21 deals with content management.

It may not be a bad idea if John Watkinson were to find some time to convert and compress these voluminous and impenetrable ISO/MPEG documents into a simple, down-to-earth language and publish a new reference masterpiece which could become available to masses of engineers all over the world.

The MPEG Handbook – MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4
John Walkinson
Hardbound volume of 416 pages
Ref: ISBN 0 240 51656 7. Price £35.00.
Focal Press, UK, 2001.
http://www.bh.com/listing/uk/default.asp

Franc Kozamernik

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The European FM Handbook 2001

This book offers country-by-country lists of FM radio stations, transmitting in VHF Band II (87.5 - 108 MHz). It covers radio stations in Europe, Russia, the Near and Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa - all in less than 700 pages. Honestly, I was expecting a much thicker book!

Two different kinds of information are included. On the one hand, there are some technical parameters relating to the transmitters: transmitting frequency, polarization and transmitter power. This list of parameters is rather short and is not complete for all the radio stations listed. On the other hand, there is some complementary information: name of station (almost in all cases, it is the name of the programme transmitted), region, address, telephone, e-mail address and web site. The coordinates of the transmitters are not included which is unfortunate because, in many cases, the address of the radio studios does not correspond to the location of the transmitters.

Even if most of the listed parameters are self explanatory, it would be useful to have an introductory explanation of the column entries. Also, it would be useful if the column headings were repeated on each page (rather than just at the beginning of a multi-page listing).

However, there is an introductory explanation of the Radio Data System (RDS). The text here is clear and easy to understand. Some countries have a section devoted to RDS codes, the UK and Ireland being two fairly comprehensive examples. A random check of other countries revealed a smaller list of PI codes for the networks in France, but no information on RDS codes in Germany, Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.

Little information is given concerning the origin of the data included in the Handbook. It is only mentioned that information has been submitted by radio stations, and some individuals are listed. No official organizations dealing with frequency management are mentioned. However, in general, the data seems to be reliable. I checked the data given for some stations and could not identify any obviously wrong information.

It should also be noted that the list of countries included in the Handbook is a lengthy one. Not only does it cover all European countries but also near- and middle-east countries (Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.), central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, etc.) and North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Mauritania, etc.). Not many handbooks include data from these countries. The communication links with these countries have often been difficult and the information received has not always been reliable. Consequently, it is worth praising the efforts made by the compilers of the Handbook to provide transmitter information about these countries, with positive results.

The European FM Handbook 2001 is not the only existing list of FM transmitters. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) publishes the International Frequency List (IFL) on CD-ROM, with information relating to frequency assignments recorded in the Master International Frequency Register (MIFRE) and maintained by the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR). This information is provided by the national administrations, in accordance with Appendix S4 (Appendix 1) of the Radio Regulations. This appendix provides a long list of the technical parameters of each transmitter, such as for example: the azimuth of maximum radiation, the elevation angle of maximum directivity, the angular width of the radiation main lobe, the maximum effective height of the antenna, etc. The result is a list (almost a database) of many technical parameters of all the transmitters in the world. In that list can be found almost any parameter necessary for frequency planning calculations. However, such a long list is very cumbersome whenever we are interested only in a specific frequency band or a specific service or a specific region (Band II, FM and Europe, for example). And the price you pay for that list is 300 CHF (October 2001).

With respect to European official organizations, neither the Conférence Européenne des Administrations des Postes et des Telecommunications (CEPT) nor the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO) have ever collected data on FM transmitters. On the broadcasting side, the EBU previously published a List of VHF Sound broadcasting stations - European Broadcasting Area. Similar books were published by the EBU covering television stations in the VHF/UHF bands, and LF/MF radio stations. These lists were established every year by the EBU receiving and measuring station at Jurbise (Belgium) and were made up mainly from data supplied by the EBU members.

The EBU lists were not as complete as the IFL list, regarding technical parameters, but they did include more information than The European FM Handbook 2001. Parameters such as data transmissions, site height (above sea level and ground level), maximum aerial height, directivity etc., were included. One data column missing from the EBU lists was the programme name. Even if this is not a technical parameter, it is valuable information in many cases.

The Jurbise monitoring station was shut down in 1995 and these EBU lists have not been published since. In fact, to keep such a list up to date required a large number of working hours and effort. Even in that case, there were often omissions and errors. However, both the EBU communications and technical departments still receive regular queries which require such lists of transmitters, in order to answer the query: the EBU lists of 1995 are still sometimes used for this purpose.

But now, having compared the old EBU lists with The European FM Handbook 2001, it is obvious that the EBU lists are already out of date and some of the information is missing. So, as from now on, let's try to use The European FM Handbook 2001 whenever possible. 62 CHF is good value for money!

European FM Handbook 2001
Bo-Kristian Lindqvist (Ed.-in-Chief)
Bound volume of 673 pages
Ref: ISBN 951-98733-0-9. Price 45 Euros.
Ab FM Media Plaza Ltd, Finland, 2001.
http://www.fmdx.com/

Elena Puigrefagut

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