A look at the MPEG video coding standard for variable bit rate video transmission

The MPEG video coding standard for the transmission of variable-bit-rate video on asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)-based broadband ISDN is examined. The focus is on its use for real-time transmission of broadcast-quality video. The impact of two key parameters, the intraframe to interframe picture ratio and the quantization index that are defined in the standard, on the bit rates per frame was studied. These parameters can be used to control video sources depending on the state of the network. Also, as opposed to previous work which looks only at bit rates per frame, the bits generated per macroblock are studied. This is the basic MPEG coding unit. By packetizing these bits, insight was obtained into the cell arrival process to a network for a MPEG video source.<>