16 ‘hip 7» Ont compression achieves a higher compression ratio by exploiting redundancies between the two channels Each layer defines 14 fixed bit rates for the coded audio data stream, which in MPEG are addressed by a bit rate index. The minimal value is always 32Kbiv’, The layers support different maximal bit ates: layer 1 allows for a maximum of 448Kbivs, layer 2 for 384Kbitis, and layer 3 for 320Kbivs. For layers | and 2, a decoder is not required to support a variable bitrate. In layer 3, variable bit rate is specified by allow- ing the bit rate index to be switched. In layer 2, not all combinations of bit rate and mode are allowed: #32 KbiUs, ASKbIVS, SOKDIUS, and SOKDiU/s are only allowed for a single channel ‘+ O4KDis, 96Kbivs, I12Kbiv’s, 128Khivs, 160KDivs, and 192Kbius are allowed for all modes. +204Kbi/s, 2S6Kbit/s, 320Kbit/s, and 384Kbit/s are allowed for the stereo, joint, stereo and dual channel modes. 7.73 Data Stream Like JPEG, MPEG specifies a pret data streams, syntax for the compressed audio and video 7.73.1 Audio Stream ‘An audio stream is comprised of frames, which are made up of audio access units, \which in tum are divided into slots. At the lowest coding complexity (ayer 1), a slot consists of 4 bytes; otherwise itis one byte. Frames consist of a fixed number of sam- ples. An audio access unit is the smallest compressed audio sequence that can be com pletely decoded independently of all other data. At 48kHz, the audio access units contained ina frame have a play time of 8 ms; at 44.1 KHz, the play time is 8.7ms; and at 32kH7, the play time is 2ms. In the case of stereo, data from both channels are included in one frame 7.73.2 Video Stream A video stream is comprised of 6 layers Atthe highest level, the sequence layer, data buffering is handled. For example, it ‘does not make sense to generate a data stream that places excessive demands en storage space in the decoder. Among other things, the beginning of the sequence layer thus includes two entries: the constant bit rate of the sequence and the ‘minimum storage capacity required during decoding. ‘A video butler verifier is added after the quantizer that uses the bitrate resulting from decoxing in order to monitor the decoding delay. The video buffer verifier influences the quantizer and forms a type of control loop. Successive sequences