Compressor 4 - About Elementary, Transport, and Program Streams

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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.

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Chapter 18

Creating MPEG-2 Output Files

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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.