About Elementary, Transport, and Program Streams
There are three common MPEG-2 stream types that are used to deliver MPEG-2 encoded
video.
• Elementary streams: These streams contain only one MPEG-2 content channel and no
audio.
194
Chapter 18
Creating MPEG-2 Output Files
• Transport streams: These streams can contain several MPEG-2 content channels and
associated audio. All the channels are multiplexed together, allowing the receiver to
choose which to play back. Compressor supports creating single-channel transport
streams that can optionally include associated audio.
Transport streams can also recover from interruptions during playback, making them
ideally suited for broadcast and streaming applications where noise or network
congestion can lead to interruptions.
• Program streams: These streams contain only one MPEG-2 content channel and its
associated audio. Program streams require an error-free delivery method and are
primarily used for storage or processing within a computer.
By default, the Compressor MPEG-2 encoder creates elementary MPEG-2 steams. You can
configure the MPEG-2 encoder to create transport or program streams and choose whether
they should include audio in the Extras tab. See
Extras Tab
for more information.
Note: The SD DVD and Blu-ray options from the Stream Usage pop-up menu output only
elementary streams. If you select either of these and then configure the output to be
either a transport or program stream, the Stream Usage changes to Generic. See
Stream
Usage
for more information.