Sequential software encoders are unavoidably slow. To obtain better software encoding performance, a cluster of workstations could be used to distribute the workload. The Berkeley Parallel MPEG Encoder can compress 4.7 frames per second on 6 Sun workstations connected by an ethernet. MPEG-1 Video Overview. The basic idea behind MPEG video compression is to remove spatial redundancy within a video frame and temporal redundancy between video frames.
Motion- compensation is used to exploit temporal redundancy.
The images in a video stream usually do not change much within small time intervals. The idea of motion-compensation is to encode a video frame based on other video frames temporally close to it. A video stream is a sequence of video frames. Each frame is a still image. 352x288 at 24-30 frames per second.