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Time and Timing Within MPEG Standards

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the time system used by the decoder at the end user side to replicate the encoder’s clock system to accomplish a synchronized media play-out at end user side. The time system usually uses tools such as clock references and timestamps coded within the media stream. This chapter does not go into detail of the protocols used in IP networks to perform the media delivery, but it explains in detail the time-related fields coded within the media streams which are used at the user side decoder to provide a synchronized media play-out. The principal Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) media standards and their time system are described in this chapter. That includes MPEG-2 Transport Streams (MP2T), MPEG-4, MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), and MPEG Media Transport (MMT). This chapter also details the time information used by Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) which is broadly used in multiple media delivery systems and used hand in hand with MPEG standards. First of all, this chapter describes the synchronization between video–audio media streams (lip sync) within a program in MP2T, and secondly, the synchronization between multiple programs, delivered within a multiplexed single MP2T stream. Secondly, this chapter describes timing issues in MPEG-4, which utilizes a different timeline system from MP2T to implement clock references and timestamps, as it is an object-oriented multimedia standard. Thirdly, this chapter describes timing issues in MPEG-DASH, which is an Adaptive Streaming over HTTP protocol widely used over the Internet. Additionally, this chapter also describes the time transmission in DVB systems, which use MP2T as a media container. The tools used are the DVB Service Information (DVB SI) and MPEG-2 Program-Specific Information (MPEG-2 PSI) tables. Finally, this chapter introduces the latest MPEG standard for media delivery, MMT, which aims to be a unique media delivery standard for heterogeneous networks, broadband technologies used in Internet TV and IPTV (Internet TV refers in this chapter to media delivery over a public non-managed IP network, such as Internet, and IPTV refers to media delivery over a private, managed IP network media delivery). It has also been proposed for broadcast (DVB) media delivery.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The presence of the Video Presentation Buffer may be not needed, as happens in [2], as the Frame Reorder Buffer could take its role, although the presence of the Video Presentation Buffer shows the concept of the presentation timestamp more clearly.

  2. 2.

    ‘Private data is any user data which is not coded according to a standard specified by ITU-T|ISO/IEC and referred to in this Specification’ [1].

  3. 3.

    For segmentBase, the MultipleSegmentBaseInformation is used, which ‘specifies multiple Segment base information’ [8].

  4. 4.

    ISAP is the index of the Stream Access Point (SAP). SAP is the ‘position in a Representation enabling playback of a media stream to be started using only the information contained in Representation data starting from that position onward’.

  5. 5.

    ‘ISAU is the index of the first access unit that follows ISAP’ [8]. Stream Access Unit (SAU).

  6. 6.

    ‘This includes spatial and temporal location of media objects in a given scene’ [17].

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ericsson, Athlone, Ireland

    Lourdes Beloqui Yuste

Authors
  1. Lourdes Beloqui Yuste
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Correspondence to Lourdes Beloqui Yuste .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Comunicaciones, Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) – Campus de Gandia, Valencia, Grao de Gandia, Spain

    Mario Montagud

  2. Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Pablo Cesar

  3. Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Fernando Boronat

  4. Departamento de Comunicaciones, Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) – Campus de Gandia, Valencia, Grao de Gandia, Spain

    Jack Jansen

Definitions

MPEG Timeline

Time information, clock references and timestamps, to reproduce, time-align encoder/source media clock to the decoder/receiver media clock.

Timestamps

A timestamp is used to agree on a specific moment in time, such as decoding, composing or playing time of an Access Unit (AU) or Media Access Unit (MDU).

Clock References

They are the mechanism to recreate encoder’s clock frequency at the decoder to guarantee the correct media stream play-out, the means used by MPEG standards to reproduce encoder’s clock rate at the decoder.

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Yuste, L.B. (2018). Time and Timing Within MPEG Standards. In: Montagud, M., Cesar, P., Boronat, F., Jansen, J. (eds) MediaSync. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65840-7_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65840-7_15

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65839-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65840-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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