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This blog is usually all about innovation, revolution and the future, but there’s one thing that stuck with me and hasn’t changed since the days I was a kid: Books.

One may wonder if in this time and age books are still relevant, and I must admit that I am a sucker for them. It may seem like a wonder how this “old” medium survived, but a “soft” version of a book would never compare to the “hard” version of it, with a hard cover, ink-filled pages you can feel and the smell… oh, the smell!.

This blog is dedicated to video applications and innovation, but with all due respect to the all mighty Internet, if you want to SERIOUSLY understand video – video processing and compression, that is – you better start reading them books.

This is not a literature column, but I will use this platform to list here five books you MUST read if you want to REALLY know your way around video.

Video Coding: An Introduction to Standard Codecs

Yair Weiner, our CTO and one of the most knowledgeable guys I know in the video business, defines this one as “The Bible of Video Coding”. I was never the religious type, but this is an excellent book to start from, and then return to whenever you need.

(buy @ Amazon)

H.264 and MPEG-4 Video Compression: Video Coding for Next-generation Multimedia

H.264 is not a “next generation” codec anymore, it’s the de-facto standard for video compression today. This covers H.264 in technical detail, with an application-based approach, and introduces the basic concepts of digital video on the way there. Standards are a pain to read, and this book eases that pain impressively.

(buy @ Amazon)

The MPEG4 Book

Before H.264, MPEG4 was king. It is still the most important standard, as it is currently the most popular standard for mobile video and the basis for H.264. The book has in-depth coverage of the many interesting and futuristic tools of MPEG-4, including practical solutions for media applications, with useful references to the standard’s reference software.

(buy @ Amazon)

Techniques and Standards for Image, Video, and Audio Coding

The “Green” book, as is it is known here, was one of the first to address the established international standards of image, video and audio compression and coding. It explains quite vividly coding and compression techniques, including the way they fit different communication systems. It is a very good introduction to the exciting world of multimedia coding.

(buy @ Amazon)

Digital Video Image Quality and Perceptual Coding (Signal Processing and Communications)

This is another book by the previous author, H.R. Rao, only this one was published a decade later (2005). As such, it focuses on one of the main challenges of video coding – perceptual quality, or quality of experience. Surveying the topic of perception, from the Human Visual Systems to perceptual coding, it covers all the latest techniques and applications, and is a great reference for anyone in the video coding business.

(buy @ Amazon)