Preface:

Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the Canadian Advisory Committee (CAC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T).

For brevity, this Standard will be referred to as "CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 13818-2" throughout.

This Standard supersedes CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 13818-2:02 (adoption of ISO/IEC 13818-2:2000).

At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 13818-2:2013 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA Group will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC.

Scope:

This Recommendation | International Standard specifies the coded representation of picture information for digital storage media and digital video communication and specifies the decoding process. The representation supports constant bit rate transmission, variable bit rate transmission, random access, channel hopping, scalable decoding, bitstream editing, as well as special functions such as fast forward playback, fast reverse playback, slow motion, pause and still pictures. This Recommendation | International Standard is forward compatible with ISO/IEC 11172-2 and upward or downward compatible with EDTV, HDTV, SDTV formats.

This Recommendation | International Standard is primarily applicable to digital storage media, video broadcast and communication. The storage media may be directly connected to the decoder, or via communications means such as busses, LANs, or telecommunications links.