1, What's MPEG-4?

MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standard developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), the committee that also developed the Emmy Award winning standards known as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. These standards made interactive video on CD-ROM, DVD and Digital Television possible. MPEG-4 is the result of another international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from all over the world.MPEG-4, with formal as its ISO/IEC designation 'ISO/IEC 14496', was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999. The fully backward compatible extensions under the title of MPEG-4 Version 2 were frozen at the end of 1999, to acquire the formal International Standard Status early in 2000. Several extensions were added since and work on some specific work-items work is still in progress. MPEG-4 builds on the proven success of three fields:

1), Digital television;
2), Interactive graphics applications (synthetic content);
3), Interactive multimedia (World Wide Web, distribution of and access to content)

to find out more about MPEG-4 standard, please vist: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-4.htm

2, What's Divx Pro?

DivX Pro TM helps transform a standard desktop computer into a high-quality video studio, distribution centre,and entertainment jukebox. The technology is so advanced that it can reduce a DVD video to almost 10 percent of it's original size, creating great looking files that can be viewed on a PC, television, or DivX certified device with little or no loss in quality.

3, What's Xvid?

Xvid is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec, it is not a product, it's an open source project which is developed and maintained by lots of people from all over the world.

4, What's NERO DIGITAL?

Nero Digital is the world's first complete audio and video codec solution. What does that mean?
A "Codec" is short for Compressor- Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding (recording) and decoding (playing) audio and video files. With Nero Digital codec you can fit more high quality audio and video content at any given screen size selection whether mobile phones or HDTV,onto CDs, flash memory or hard drives. The Nero Digital codec compresses audio and video content to a fraction of its original size with virtually no perceptual loss of quality. Nero Digital codec also enables you to convert audio and video content into smaller screen formasts at record breaking speeds, allowing you to enjoy playback on Nero Digital Certified mobile phones, PDAs, and portable media players.

Why is Nero Digital better than current codecs?
With the technological and communication advances of today's connected age, MPEG-4 was born out of the need for a highly efficient, no compromise audio and video format. In the mobile and digital video camera world, MPEG-4 has quickly established itself as the "codec of choice" for devices such as cameras, mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices.Nero Digital audio and video codecs are completely based on the industry standard MPEG-4 Video (ISO/ICE 14496-2 and MPEG-4 Audio (LC AAC, HE AAC and PS AAC), allowing the flexibility to play other popular MPEG-4 content, yet offering additional features and advanced technology transcending the next 2 decades.

5, H.264 High Definition is the Future

H.264 is the next-generation video compression technology in the MPEG-4 standard, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10. H.264 can match the best possible MPEG-2 quality at up to half the data rate. The intent of H.264/AVC project has been to create a standard contains a number of new features that would be capable of providing good video quality at bit rates that are substantially lower (e.g., half or less) than what previous standards would need (e.g., relative to MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2), and to do so without so much of an increase in complexity as to make the design impractical (excessively expensive) to implement. An additional goal was to do this in a flexible way that would allow the standard to be applied to a very wide variety of applications (e.g., for both low and high bit rates, and low and high resolution video) and to work well on a very wide variety of networks and systems (e.g., for broadcast, DVD storage, RTP/IP packet networks, and ITU-T multimedia telephony systems).

(a)The H.264 encoder features:

1. Intelligent multi-pass encoding for the best possible results at the desired bit rate with the optimal number of compression passes.

2. Time-saving single-pass encoding for creating draft encodes, meeting impending deadlines and live encoding with QuickTime Broadcaster.

3. Peak-constrained VBR options for limited data-rate scenarios such as streaming and CD/DVD playback.

4. Advanced frame reordering (B-frame) support to more efficiently represent movie data.

5. 4x4 integer transform for reducing traditional blocking and ringing artifacts, especially in areas of fine detail.

6. Improved intraframe prediction for more efficient compression of details and gradients in high-motion video.

7. Increased precision in motion estimation for crisp reconstruction of objects in motion.

8. Flexible block sizes in motion estimation for more efficient encoding of complicated motion in areas of fine detail.

9. Adaptively tuned in-loop deblocking filter for eliminating blocking artifacts, resulting in a smooth, clean image.

(b) H.264: Making MPEG-4 Better

The original MPEG-4 standard was designed to address the following issues:

Interoperability. The standard is not specific to any one platform but is designed for all platforms.

Transport Independence. MPEG-4 leaves the choice of transport mechanism up to the service provider. This allows MPEG-4 to be used in a wide range of networking environments.

Compression and Transmission of Rich Media. MPEG-4 has been designed for the low and mid bit-rate compression and transmission of rich media streams.

Interactivity. MPEG-4 allows content authors and viewers to influence how they interact with a stream.

Scalability. MPEG-4 allows for flexibility in the way multimedia streams are decoded. Decoding bit rate and resolution of content is adapted to the networking environment and display device. This quality is necessary when transmitting rich media over heterogeneous networks, as well as for applications where the receiver is not capable of displaying the full resolution or full quality images.

Profiles. MPEG-4 offers different technology profiles for different applications. In this way, service providers need not use the entire set of technologies, but only the subset that suits their applications needs.

The JVT has set out several enhancements, which it wishes to achieve in the H.264 standard. These are:

To simplify the design using well-known building blocks

To improve the compression performance and reach a 50% or greater bit rate savings from H.263v2 or MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile at all bit rates

Support a flexible application that is appropriate to a variety of services, including low delay (e.g., no B pictures) for real-time conversational services and higher delay appropriate for storage or sever-based streaming applications.

Ensure network friendliness through ease of packetization, information priority control and application to video streaming services.

Ensure error resilience through packet loss resilience and mobile channel corruption resilience.

Full specification of decoding by resolving the mismatch problem (e.g., integer transform, VQ,)

Performance improvements at higher bitrates

File storage support that includes simple stream exchange, http streaming service, random access and multiple streams with transitions.

(c) Massive Quality, Minimal Files

H.264 uses the latest innovations in video compression technology to provide incredible video quality from the smallest amount of video data. This means you see crisp, clear video in much smaller files, saving you bandwidth and storage costs over previous generations of video codecs. H.264 delivers the same quality as MPEG-2 at a third to half the data rate and up to four times the frame size of MPEG-4 Part 2 at the same data rate. H.264 is truly a sight to behold.

The Benefits of H.264
Unprecedented video quality. H.264 uses the latest innovations in video compression technology to provide consistently crisp and clear video for the best possible viewing experience.

Ultra-efficient. H.264 delivers incredible video quality at data rates one-fourth to one-half the size of previous video formats.

In contrast to MPEG-4 with its many profiles, H.264 has three profiles, as outlined below: