Konstantinos Konstantinides, Cheng-Tie Chen, Ting-Chung Chen,

In 1988, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) established the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) with the mission to develop standards for the coded representation of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media. The work of the MPEG group led to the development of several ISO standards, including ISO 11172, known as MPEG-1 [1]; ISO 13818, known as MPEG-2 [2]; and ISO 14496, known as MPEG-4 [3]. In recent years, digital video has become a key ingredient in entertainment, digital broadcasting, education, and business. The adoption of the MPEG standard offered consumers a new generation of products, such as DVD players, digital TV, personal video recorders, and DVD recorders. Among the key components for all these new products are integrated circuits (ICs) for MPEG-2 encoding and decoding. While the first generation of MPEG ICs [4] offered playback-only capability, the second generation of MPEG-encoding solutions [5], [6] allowed for a new class of affordable digital video recording products. These ICs integrated complete MPEG-2 video encoders and decoders (codecs); however, a complete audio/video (a/v) system would still require additional hardware for audio processing (encoding and decoding) and for multiplexing or demultiplexing the audio and video streams [7]. The third generation of MPEG ICs [8], [9] pushed system integration even further by integrating both audio and video encoding and decoding into a single chip. In addition to real-time audio and video coding, these ICs provide flexible host interfaces, programmable support for a/v multiplexing and demultiplexing, and other functions, such as video preand post-processing of video data, and on-screen display (OSD). These features increase chip complexity and go far beyond the mandatory specifications of the ISO standards, but they are essential for the development of cost-effective, MPEG-based consumer appliances. In this article, we review the design of a single-chip MPEG-2 a/v codec, covering the design process from the MPEG specifications and system requirements to the final design. After a brief overview of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards, we examine the system requirements using as an example a universal serial bus (USB)-based MPEG-2 real-time digital video recorder. Finally, we present in more detail the hardware and software architecture of a specific MPEG a/v codec.