Compression for Great Video and Audio, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 22 Web Video

For many (most?) people, video compression equates with putting video on the web. Back during the CD-ROM epoch, worthwhile web video was “a year away” for quite a few years. But in 1998, my video compression business went from being 80 percent CD-ROM in January to 80 percent web in December. This was frustrating in some ways—we’d finally gotten CD-ROM to approach broadcast quality, so optimizing video for tiny windows and narrow bandwidths was like starting over with QuickTime 1.0 (thus starting the third iteration of the Postage Stamp Cycle – every five or so years, compression starts over at a postage stamp size. HD, CD-ROM, web, and most recently mobile. Video watches should hit around 2012). Today, web video is at least ...