I laughed, I cried, it was better than GIF

This is a very advanced book with many technical details. A must have for everyone working in the field of image compression. For the beginner there is some text in the first part of the book, but I think that this book is primary for people working with actual implementations.

The only way to go! This is a well written book that is structured like a text book, but stays true to the standard. Excellent overview of FDCT theory and Entropy Coding.

This book gave me the knowledge required to understand the syntax of MPEG1 sytem and video streams as well as understand the compression algorithms utilized.
As a Digital Video Specialist, I still refer to this book four years after buying it.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I found this book to be a great resource! The MPEG-1 codec is covered in some depth, including syntax. Other topics like MPEG-2 and rate control are also touched on. What this book (and most others on the topic) is missing, is an in-depth discussion on motion estimation techniques. The Kluwer book on motion estimation by Borko Furht will fill in some of the blanks, but is too expensive for what you get. All in all, I think this book is suited for someone wanting to impliment or understand an implimentation of the codec. It is not so much for the person looking for theory on video compression. The book, "Video Compression", by Peter Symes is a great one for that !

This is a great book to learn the mpeg1 format from. With its help you can confidently write a mpeg1 decoder. I have not read the official spec, but I found the descriptions given in the book quite lucid, in spite of the fact that I started to read this book without any video compression background. However, this is not a book on video compression in general. Surely a book on THAT topic would not have a title bearing the words "mpeg" and "standard". I have some experience in reading file format standards, and I only wish every file format standard would have such a nice book to explain it!

The book even covers fundamentals like DCT and Huffman coding (as much as is needed in this book). It has entire chapters on motion estimation and motion compensation. I like the way the book starts off with a general informative overview, rather than as a typical "standards manual" starting with a list of notations and fonts to be used.

The pseudo codes given in the book are taken from the original spec (with due references). These are explained with flowcharts.

If you are trying to learn video compression in general, then this is not the book for you. There are plenty of books on that topic. This book serves a much more esoteric purpose of elucidating the gory details of one of the most important video file formats, and it fulfils this purpose with complete applomb!