What is MPEG-2 and how does it differ from MPEG-1?
MPEG-2 is a more powerful and faster compression scheme than MPEG-1. MPEG-2 conserves storage space by scanning successive frames and pixels within a frame for repetitious information. Only information that changes from pixel to pixel or frame to frame is re-encoded digitally. Static scenes, such as two people talking against an unmoving blue sky, require far less memory than fast moving action scenes. MPEG-2 encoding takes advantage of the fact that some scenes/passages are more difficult than others to compress (variable bit rate or VBR) and require more data while other scenes/passages are less difficult and less data is necessary.
