ABSTRACT
After having completed the tasks of setting two highly acclaimed international standards for audiovisual applications, i.e.
• MPEG-1 (ISO/IEC 11172), a standard for storage and retrieval of moving pictures and audio on storage media [1]
• MPEG-2 (ISO/IEC 13818), a standard for digital television. [2]
MPEG has finalized a new coding standard, MPEG-4, a standard for multimedia applications, which has become an International Standard in December 1998 with the ISO number 14496 [3]. This is prompted by a need for a new standard with the convergence of the three separate technologies in the fields of entertainment and communications (e.g., digital television), interactive graphics applications (e.g., animation) and interactive multimedia applications (e.g., World Wide Web). There are clearly commonalities in the technologies with regard to the production, distribution and access of content and MPEG-4 aims to provide the standardized elements enabling the integration of the three processes within a common framework.
