Introduction to Video Compression - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 8

1.19 Packing Your Bags for the Trip

Chapter 16 looks at how we store video in files. Some applications require particular kinds of
containers and will not work if you present your video in the wrong kind of file. It is a bit like
taking a flight with a commercial airline. Your suitcase may be the wrong size or shape or may
weigh too much. You have to do something about it before you will be allowed to take it on
the plane. It is the same with video. You may need to run some conversions on the video files
before presenting the contents for compression. Chapter 17 examines tape formats.

1.20 Immigration, Visa, and Passport

When you travel to another country, you must make sure your paperwork is all in order. In
the context of video encoding, we have to make sure the right licenses are in place. We need
rights control because the content we are encoding may not always be our own. Playback
clients make decisions of their own based on the metadata in the content, or they can inter-
act with the server to determine when, where, and how the content may be played.
Your playback client is the hardware apparatus, software application, movie player,
or web page plug-in that you use to view the content. Chapter 18 examines digital rights
management (DRM) and commercial issues.

1.21 Boarding Pass

Where do you want to put your finished compressed video output? Are you doing this so
you can archive some content? Is there a public-facing service that you are going to pro-
vide? This is often called deployment. It is a process of delivering your content to the right
place and it is covered in Chapter 19.

1.22 On the Taxiway

Chapter 20 is about how your compressed video is streamed to your customers. Streaming
comes in a variety of formats. Sometimes we are just delivering one program, but even then
we are delivering several streams of content at the same time. Audio and video are processed
and delivered to the viewer independently, even though they appear to be delivered together.
That is actually an illusion because they are carefully synchronized. It is quite obvious when
they are not in sync, however, and it could be your responsibility to fix the problem.

1.23 Rotate and Wheels-Up

In Chapters 21 to 25, we look at how those codec design principles have been applied in the
real world. This is where we discuss the generally available tools and what they offer you as