LAYER-III. A flexible coding standard

The ISO-MPEG standard IS 11172/1/ defines procedures for the low bitrate coding of video and audio signals. In its audio section, it offers the choice of three reduction schemes, called "Layer-I, -II and -III". The algorithms diffe in complexity and performance, with Layer-III especially useful for applications with very low bitrates (<= 64 kbit/s per audio channel). Moreover, some special features of Layer-III support very effective codec implementations. This paper describes the basic features of Layer-III and presents some typical applications.