ISO 11172 (MPEG-1) and ISO 13818 (MPEG-2)

[Emiel Schiphorst]

This may be a valuable post for other people.

I can NOT provide copies, because that is forbidden.

A. In case you need ISO 11172(-2); in total there are 10 documents about ISO 11172 (MPEG-1).

It can be bought from ISO for only CHF (Swiss Franc) 44:
First, you have to register with a userid and password.
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueListPage.CatalogueList
(type in 11172 to search for)

These are the ISO 11172-2 documents (the last 2 are corrections and are for free):

ISO/IEC 11172-2:1993 Information technology -- Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1,5 Mbit/s -- Part 2: Video
ISO/IEC 11172-2:1993/Cor 1:1996 (available in English only)
ISO/IEC 11172-2:1993/Cor 2:1999 (available in English only)

B. In case you need ISO 13818(-2); in total there are 27 documents about ISO 13818 (MPEG-2).

These are the ISO 13818-2 documents (These documents costs CHF 230,00 - free - CHF 15,00 respectively):

ISO/IEC 13818-2:2000 Information technology -- Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information: Video
ISO/IEC 13818-2:2000/Cor 1:2002
ISO/IEC 13818-2:2000/Amd 1:2001

OK, buying it all will cost more ...

[SaSi]

I guess you finaly realized that you cannot proceed with your project without proper documentation for the format .

One additional info on the documents:

Both for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, the basic documents are -1, -2 and -3 (sections).

The first defines how the multiplexed streams are formed - i.e. how audio, video and anything else (e.g. multiple audio streams, private streams like subpictures, etc) are combined together to form .mpg or .vob files.

The second one (11172-2 and 13818-2) defines the video.

The third (-3) defines the audio (i.e. MPEG-1 Layers I,II, and III or MPEG-2 Layers I, II and III). Nothing seems to use MPEG-2 audio, yet, so even for DVD creators and MPEG-2 encoders, the standard used is MPEG-1 audio.

The above are the primary documents. You don't really need anything more to fully understand MPEG-1 and 2.

However:

Part 4 refers to compatibilty and conformance testing. If you are writing an MPEG-1 or -2 verifier program, that's the part you need to convert to a program!

In addition to the above, you also need the AC3 audio specs, which, very interestingly - are free for public distribution.

The only thing I've never come across is the subtitle format for DVDs. I have to assume that their specification (RLE encoding and private stream format) are documented in the DVD Book, since subtitles are not part of the MPEG-2 standard themselves.

Also, although you can buy these documents from www.iso.org, the prices there are a bit expensive. You may be able to purchase them both electronically - download - or in paper format from local engineering bodies in several countries. I've seen one, at least, that has 40% better prices for downloaded versions.