Digital Video Compression (with CD-ROM)

Rating:
Summary: "Buy Together" recommendation not appropriate
Review: I am the author of "Digital Video Compression" and I have to caution you that Amazon's "Buy Together" recommendation is NOT appropriate. "Video Compression Demystified" is an earlier version of the same book, and everything in there (except for a few mistakes!) is in the 2003 "Digital Video Compression". You would waste your money buying both!
Enjoy!
Peter Symes, author

Rating:
Summary: "Buy Together" recommendation not appropriate
Review: I am the author of "Digital Video Compression" and I have to caution you that Amazon's "Buy Together" recommendation is NOT appropriate. "Video Compression Demystified" is an earlier version of the same book, and everything in there (except for a few mistakes!) is in the 2003 "Digital Video Compression". You would waste your money buying both!
Enjoy!
Peter Symes, author

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I liked this book very much. I graduated at a technical university and I wish I had had such good books there! The basics, the chapters on JPEG, MPEG-1, -2 and DV are extremely good and the other chapters give a good overview on the corresponding subjects. I do recommend this book to anyone interested in general video compression, or, e.g. how DVD works...
If I lost this book somehow I would definitely buy it again!

Rating:
Summary: Not an h.264 Book
Review: Richardson book (H.264 and MPEG-4 Video Compression) is the best book on h.264 -- by virtue of being the only one.

The cover of Symes' book proclaims "Featuring: JVT/H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10". However, there's one chapter on JVT, and it is somewhat sketchy. The only level of real detail is on the transform. The rest of the AVC/h.264 standard receives brief and superficial coverage. The coverage of WMV-9, an analogous next gen codec, is even sketchier. It doesn't mention the SMPTE VC-9 standardization effort, based on WMV-9.

Next gen codecs aside, it's not a bad book as a general overview of compression. It has a breezy style that's easy to read. While some sections are quite thorough, it doesn't consistently dig past the surface.

Here's an example:

"Context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) is a development of arithmetic coding mentioned in Chapter 3."

-- page 243, Chapter 12, JVT

"Explanation of the arithmetic coding process is beyond the scope of this book."

-- page 47, Chapter 3, Entropy Coding

In a nut shell, this book is a good addition to the video processing bookshelf, but it won't stand as a definitive reference to this new protocol. Maybe next edition.