MPEG-4 Overview - (V.18 – Singapore Version). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N4030,
March 2001.

http://www.edgesoft.co.kr/download/edgedata/MPEG-4%20Overview.pdf

ISO/IEC recommendation MPEG-4 Visual (JTC1/SC29/WG11 N3908). Approved January 2001.

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/working_documents/mpeg-04/visual/video_vm.zip

ITU-T recommendation H.263. Approved in January 2005.

http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.263/e

This is another Swiss-Army Knife converter, letting you move back and forth between AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DivX, and SVCD formats.

Version 6.7 is shipping as of June, 2007.

http://www.winmpg.com/

VLC is an Open Source multimedia player that supports your usual mix of audio and video formats. Support is currently included for MPEG-1, -2, -4, h.264, mp3, ogg and more. The site includes precompiled binaries for a really nice range of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, varios Linux flavors, and even BeOS!

Version 0.8.6 of this player is shipping as of June, 2007.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

GSpot identifies presence or absence of “B-VOP”, “Qpel”, and “GMC”, thus allowing the user to determine if a DivX5 file is compatible with KISS and other popular hardware DivX players. Provides information about MPEG1 or MPEG2 video and/or MPEG1 or MPEG2 audio either as “elementary” streams or multiplexed into an MPEG1 “system stream” or an MPEG2 “program stream”. Limited support for MPEG4 video when contained in an AVI stream, such as DivX5.

Version 2.7a is shipping as of February, 2007.

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/

The MPEG4IP project provides an MPEG and IETF standards-based system for encoding, streaming, and playing MPEG-4 encoded audio and video.

Version 1.5 is shipping as of November, 2006.

http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net/

This is the current home for the DivX encoder and decoder. DivX ships in three different versions which offer varying levels of features for varying prices (including free.) Shipping DivX Video 6.6 as of May, 2007.

http://www.divx.com/divx/

This project is developing an open source MPEG-4 codec. The code is currently ported to Solaris, Win32, and Linux.

Version 1.1.3 is shipping in June, 2007.

http://www.xvid.org/

A video conferencing project for Windows PCs using an H.263 video codec.

http://codeproject.com/internet/videonet.asp

An impressive set of links to papers, schedules, articles, and contacts for MPEG. Clearly the place to go for information relating to the standardization process.

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/

The IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4 consists of a set of JavaTM classes and APIs with five sample applications: three cross-platform playback applications and two tools for generating MPEG-4 content for use with MPEG-4-compliant devices. These applications are as follows:

• AVgen: a simple, easy-to-use GUI tool for creating audio/video-only content for ISMA- or 3GPP-compliant devices
• XMTBatch: a tool for creating rich MPEG-4 content beyond simple audio and video
• M4Play: an MPEG-4 client playback application
• M4Applet for ISMA: a Java player applet for ISMA-compliant content
• M4Applet for HTTP: a Java applet for MPEG-4 content played back over HTTP.

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/tk4mpeg4?open&S_PKG=&S_TACT=103AMW61&S_CMP=GR&ca=dgr-ln
xwd01tk4mpeg4

Stated objective: To further the adoption of the MPEG-4 Standard, by establishing MPEG-4 as an accepted and widely used standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end users..

Update: This group has now changed it’s name to The MPEG Industry Forum, and have expanded their charter to include all emerging MPEG standards. For right now that includes MPEG-7 and MPEG-21, but we’re not ruling out anything in the future.

http://www.m4if.org/

The MMSP-2 chip has been developed by MagicEyes for use in consumer products. It can decode MPEG-1, -2, and -4 as well as various audio codecs. While you’re asking, yes, it has an LCD controller, a Poly Wavetable sound synthesizer, and more.

http://www.mesdigital.com/Products/product_mmsp2.asp

XVidQP is a tool that is designed to tell you something about the quality of an MPEG-4 stream. It does this by giving you a batch of reports, including:

• Quantization values of I-Frames and P-Frames
• Average quantizer value of I-Frames and P-Frames
• Graphical histogram distribution of global clip quantizers
• Minimum and maximum frame sizes of all frames

It looks right now like this tool is only shipping for Win32.

Beta 3 was shipping as of March, 2003.

http://xvidqp.sourceforge.net/

Links to scads of papers, web sites, software, etc., all related to the MPEG-4 standard.

http://www.m4if.org/resources.php

This article describes a proof-of-concept app running on a Nokia 7650 that performs MPEG-4 encoding and decoding, creating a portable video phone. No word on how you can get the code, or how difficult it would be to port this Symbios OS product to other platforms. Still, the company that developed the product, Hantro Products, does supply the codecs that do the trick.

http://www.infosync.no/show.php?id=2016

This company labels itself as “The world leader in end-to-end MPEG-4 Solutions.” Looks like they sell a suite of authoring and encoding tools, and perhaps some server software. Follow the link to “About MPEG-4″ and you’ll get a little bit of text plus some more links.

http://www.ivast.com/

Apple has a page with info on MPEG-4. They use this page to explain how this all fits in with QuickTime.

http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/

On2 Technologies is asking the US Department of Justice to take action against the coalition of MPEG-4 patent holders, arguing that the coalition is anti-competitive. Maybe not just a coincidence, On2 is presently pushing their own streaming format with industry standards groups.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-879439.html

A white paper discussing the history and various permutations of the H.263 video encoding standard from the folks at UBVideo.

http://ubvideo.com/public/h263-white_paper.pdf

This Wikipedia entry describes the MPEG-4 standard, the version of MPEG designed for lower bit-rate applications. Light on detail.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=MPEG-4

Links to the various parts of the H.263 standard on the ITU page. Get out your credit card if you want a copy - the ITU doesn’t give things away!

http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=folders&lang=e&parent=T-REC-H.263

Toshiba is creating MPEG-4 support chips that vendors are looking to included in mobile handset. This article notes that the chipset will be designed to work with specific baseband hardware, such as Qualcomm’s, and might not work elsewhere.

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20011030S0044

Texas Instruments announced the release of a DSP based Image Developer’s Kit, with support coming for JPEG2000, MPEG-4, and other standards.

http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/news/2001/01013.htm

Subtitled Basics, Standards and Wavelet-Based Algorithms for Image and Video Coding. This German-language textbook contains full source code (ANSI-C) of a wavelet-based image coder.

http://www-nt.e-technik.uni-rostock.de/~ts/Buch/book.html

Peter Cherriman’s page on H.263 coding, includes information, pointers, and a couple of demo sequences.

http://rice.ecs.soton.ac.uk/peter/h263/h263.html

These folks sell a couple of boxes that do MPEG-2 encoding. Looks like they are oriented towards the video broadcasting business.

http://www.tiernan.com/

ScalVico is a project that refers to a Scalable Video Codec. Apparently the package now supports H.263.

http://www4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~jnweiger/ScalVico/vic/

This company is the licensing authority created by the owners of the most or all of the patents related to MPEG. Apparently they have the authority to provide one-stop shopping for your royalty arrangements.

http://www.mpegla.com/