MPEG-2

MPEG-2; Short for Moving Picture Experts Group, and pronounced m-peg, a working group of ISO. The term also refers to the family of digital video compression standards and file formats developed by the group. MPEG generally produces better-quality video than competing formats, such as Video for Windows, Indeo and QuickTime. MPEG files can be decoded by special hardware or by software.

MPEG-2 offers resolutions of 720x480 and 1280x720 at 60 fps, with full CD-quality audio. This is sufficient for all the major TV standards, including NTSC, and even HDTV. MPEG-2 is used by DVD-ROMs. MPEG-2 can compress a 2 hour video into a few gigabytes. While decompressing an MPEG-2 data stream requires only modest computing power, encoding video in MPEG-2 format requires significantly more processing power.

The different unbeaten a NTSC mpeg-2 and HDTV mpeg-2 are manly in the Mbps; the NTSC Mpeg-2 have a Mbps that can be as high as 9 Mbps but should sit around 6.6 Mbps for that is what a stander DVD player works at. Now a HDTV Mpeg is 19.0 Mbps normal DVD Player can’t Handel this bit rate. To play a disk at 19.0 Mbps will only play in a few thinks like all Apple Computer made sometime in the last 8 years.

When making an Mpeg-2 using Final Cut Pro it is best to use the compares program in the Final Cut Pro Studio software package made by Apple Computer. This program lets you make two pass over your video to gather as much of the information as possible.