MPEG-FAQ 4.0:

MPEGTool

MPEGTool is an application which combines  MPEGTool  encoder  and
MPEGTool statistics with X11/Motif based Graphical User Interface
(GUI). MPEGTool encoder is an MPEG-1 encoder for RGB and CCIR-601
format  input video sequences. MPEGTool statistics is a graphical
statistics tool which can be used to analyze the statistical pro-
perties of the encoding process. MPEGTool allows a user to speci-
fy several of the MPEG parameters such as the intraframe  to  in-
terframe ratio, and the quantizer scale through its GUI.

MPEGTool has been tested on Sun SparcStation and HP9000  current-
ly.   To  compile  under  these  machines,  see  instructions  in
Makefile.

GUI of MPEGTool is based on Motif toolkit from the Open  Software
Foundation  (OSF),  so  Motif (Xm) libraries as well as X Toolkit
(Xt)  libraries  and  Xlib  are  required  to  compile  MPEGTool.
Although  MPEGTool can be executed under several window managers,
Motif window manager (mwm) is recommended. We've tested mwm, Open
look  window  manager  (olwm), Tab window manager (twm). With the
twm, we recommend to  put  'DecorateTransients'  in  your  .twmrc
file.

MPEGTool supports disk and tape device for video data  input  and
MPEG  code  output. Also, MPEGTool creates statistics data on the
disk. Statistics data requires around 1/350  to  1/250  of  video
data  size  and  MPEG  code requires 1/10 to 1/5 depending on the
parameter.

MPEGTool encoder encodes RGB/CCIR-601  format  video  input  data
from  tape  or  disk device by MPEG-1 specification and write the
encoded data into tape or disk. In addition, the statistics  data
can be stored into disk device for MPEGTool statistics analysis.

We can set several encoding parameters from MPEGTool Encoder win-
dow.  For setting device related parameters, click Configure but-
ton and modifying parameters in  MPEGTool  Encoder  Configuration
window. To start Encoding, click Start and MPEGTool begins encode
if there is no parameter error or device related error.

MPEGTool statistics creates types of graphs to analyze  statisti-
cal properties of MPEG encoded video stream. Four types of graphs
can be selected, Distribution, Generation Record, Autocorrelation
and  Interarrival Time. First three of these plot each statistics
of   MPEG   code   in   five   levels,   Bit/Frame,    Bit/Slice,
Bit/MacroBlock,  ATM/Frame and ATM/Slice. Interarrival Time plots
the time elapsed between arrivals of ATM packets within a  frame.
The interarrival times are calculated from the bits generated per
macroblock within a frame.  This interarrival time is  normalized
to units of X seconds (where X will depend on the hardware imple-
mentation of the coder).

"MPEGTool: An X windows  based  MPEG   encoder   and   statistics
tool", Proceedings of ACM Multimedia '93, Anaheim, CA

This paper contains  more  details  and  several  examples  about
MPEGTool.   PostScript  file of this paper is placed on anonymous
ftp on atum.ee.upenn.edu.