MPEG-4 Based Multimedia Information System

Recent creation and finalization of the MPEG4 international standard has provided a common platform and unified framework for multimedia information representation. In addition to provide highly efficient compression of both natural and synthetic audio-visual (AV)contents such as video, audio, sound, texture maps, graphics, still images, MIDI, and animated structure, MPEG4 enables greater capabilities for manipulating AV contents in the compressed domain with object-based representation. MPEG4 is a natural migration of the technological convergence of several fields: digital television, computer graphics, interactive multimedia, and Internet. This tutorial chapter briefly discusses some example features and applications enabled by the MPEG4 standard