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Introduction to Digital Multimedia,
Compression, and
1 . 1 THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
It is practically a cliché these days to claim that all
electronic communications is engaged in a digital
revolution. Some communications media such as
the telegraph and telegrams were always digital.
However, almost all other electronic communica-
tions started and flourished as analog forms.
In an analog communication system, a trans-
mitter sends voltage variations, which a receiver
then uses to control transducers such as loudspeak-
ers, fax printers, and TV cathode ray tubes (CRTs),
as shown in Figure 1.1. With digital, on the other
hand, the transmitter first converts the controlling
voltage into a sequence of 0s and 1s (called bits),
which are then transmitted. The receiver then
reconverts or decodes the bits back into a replica of
the original voltage variations.
The main advantage of digital representation of
information is the robustness of the bitstream. It
can be stored and recovered, transmitted and
received, processed and manipulated, all virtually
without error. The only requirement is that a zero
bit be distinguishable from a one bit, a task that is
quite easy in all modern signal handling systems.
Over the years, long and medium distance tele-
phone transmissions have all become digital. Fax
transmission changed to digital in the 1970s and
80s. Digitized entertainment audio on compact
disks (CDs) has completely displaced vinyl records
and almost replaced cassette tape. Digital video
satellite is available in several countries, and digital
video disks have just arrived in the market. Many
other video delivery media are also about to
become digital, including over-the-air, coaxial
cable, video tape and even ordinary telephone
wires. The pace of this conversion is impressive,
even by modern standards of technological inno-
vation.
Almost all sensory signals are analog at the
point of origination or at the point of perception.
Audio and video signals are no exception. As an
example, television, which was invented and stan-
dardized over fifty years ago, has remained mostly
analog from camera to display, and a plethora of
products and services have been built around these
analog standards, even though dramatic changes
have occurred in technology. However, inexpensive
integrated circuits, high-speed communication net-
works, rapid access dense storage media, and com-
puting architectures that can easily handle video-
rate data are now rapidly making the analog
standard obsolete.
Digital audio and video signals integrated with
computers, telecommunication networks, and con-
sumer products are poised to fuel the information
revolution. At the heart of this revolution is the
digital compression of audio and video signals.
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2 Introduction to Digital Multimedia, Compression, and MPEG-2
This chapter summarizes the benefits of digitiza-
tion as well as some of the requirements for the
compression of the multimedia signals.
1.1.1 Being Digital
Even though most sensory signals are analog,
the first step in processing, storage, or communica-
tion is usually to digitize the signals into a string of
bits. Analog-to-cligital converters that digitize such
signals with required accuracy and speed have
become inexpensive over the years. The cost or
quality of digitization therefore is no longer an
issue. However, simple digitization usually results
in a bandwidth expansion, in the sense that transmit-
ting or storage of these bits often takes up more
bandwidth or storage space than the original ana-
log signal. In spite of this, digitization is becoming
*NTSC and PAL are analog composite color TV standards. Japan and North America use NTSC. Most of Europe, Australia
etc. use PAL.
universal because of the relative ease of handling
the digital signal versus the analog. In particular,
signal processing for enhancement, removal of
artifacts, transformation, compression, and so forth
is much easier to do in the digital domain using a
growing family of specialized integrated circuits.
One example of this is the conversion from one
video standard to another (e.g., NTSC to PAL*).
Sophisticated adaptive algorithms required for
good picture quality in standards conversion can
be implemented only in the digital domain. Anoth-
er example is the editing of digitized signals. Edits
that require transformation (e.g., rotation, dilation
of pictures or time-warp for audio) are significantly
more difficult in the analog domain.
The density of today’s digital storage media
continues to increase, making storage of digital
multimedia signals practical. With digital storage,