Visual communication is commonly regarded as the next generation communication tool beyond the conventional voice communication. To achieve more efficient visual communication and fully utilize limited channel bandwidth and storage space, video compression (or coding) that reduces data amount is necessary. Video coders were once thought to be technically and economically unfeasible. However, thanks to the parallel progress on microelectronics and compression techniques, video coders for a variety of applications are becoming a reality. Realizing this, tremendous global efforts are being made to standardize video coders for various applications so as to expedite the ubiquitous deployment of visual communications. In this paper, common elements of video compression are described, followed by an introduction of international video coding standards for applications ranging from still image to HDTV. Specifically, JPEG (for still image compression), H. 261 (for videophone and videoconferencing applications), and MPEG (for storage media) are covered. HDTV standard proposals to the F.C.C. in the U.S. are also discussed briefly. This paper is concluded with a discussion of products and some network issues related to video compression.
โฒ93 Academic Press, Inc.