Performance comparison of MPEG1 and MPEG2 video compression standards

MPEG1 and MPEG2 are generally accepted by the industry as the international video compression standards for a broad range of video transmission and storage applications. Both schemes are fundamentally similar-based on motion compensation and DCT encoding-but their performance differ depending on the characteristics of the video. MPEG2 typically performs better when encoding interlaced video with a large object or camera motion; however, when encoding progressive scanned video it may not achieve better results over MPEG1, and in many instances it is actually inferior. The video quality of MPEG1 and MPEG2 is compared using various types of sequences, and the statistical distribution of the bits among various elements in the bitstreams-such as motion vectors, DCT coefficients, and overheads-are investigated to gain a better understanding of their performance differences.