Anatomy of MPEG2 video

Hi,

I would like to decode and analyze the contents of an MPEG2 video stream.
My only source on the format is the book "Digital Video: Introduction to
MPEG-2" by Haskell et al. It is really not a big deal to parse through the
program stream and extract the video stream by skipping irrelevant
packets.

Decoding the picture data itself, and here especially the macroblocks,
turned out to be very tough. The main problems are the VLCs, several
optional/alternative data blocks and the lack of markers for certain
positions in the bit stream. I can not debug any errors in my code because
there is no redundancy and a position error of only one bit would lead to
a completely different result.

Is there any software decoder that features a *very* verbose diagnostic
output so that I can compare my results to a reference? Or is there a good
description of the macroblock format available on the web?


Wolfgang

"Wolfgang v. Hansen" <wvhansen@fom.fgan.de> wrote in message
news:Pine.WNT.4.61.0410140810360.1896@WLT064.walhalla.de...
> Hi,
>
> I would like to decode and analyze the contents of an MPEG2 video stream.
> My only source on the format is the book "Digital Video: Introduction to
> MPEG-2" by Haskell et al. It is really not a big deal to parse through the
> program stream and extract the video stream by skipping irrelevant
> packets.
>
> Decoding the picture data itself, and here especially the macroblocks,
> turned out to be very tough. The main problems are the VLCs, several
> optional/alternative data blocks and the lack of markers for certain
> positions in the bit stream. I can not debug any errors in my code because
> there is no redundancy and a position error of only one bit would lead to
> a completely different result.
>
> Is there any software decoder that features a *very* verbose diagnostic
> output so that I can compare my results to a reference? Or is there a good
> description of the macroblock format available on the web?
>

http://www.elecard.com/products/mpe...0explorer.shtml

http://www.digvid.info/software/bbtools.php