Quick BIFS primer

Table of contents:

• Introduction
• How to use BIFSENC/MP4ENC
• How to use mp4tool
• How to teach yourself other tricks

Introduction

This will be quick ;-)

This primer is here to help you start writing your own scenes in BIFS.

To follow this primer, we recommend using the Osmo4 player.

Choose your favorite weapon (mp4tool or BIFSEnc/MP4Enc) and go to that section.

We welcome suggestions for improvements of this page.

Enjoy!

How to use BIFSENC/MP4ENC

Here is where to get the tools, compiled for PC Windows:

• BIFSENC
• MP4ENC
• mp4 iso library DLL

Before you load the samples, you need the streams which can download from this directory. You have to put the streams in a directory at the same level as the individual sample directories for the scripts to work.

Then you have some directories with samples:

• Audio : a sample with just audio, in a format for which there is a decoder available within the IM1 software, ie G723
• AudioVideo : a sample with audio and video, in a format for which there is a decoder available within the IM1 software, ie G723 and H263
• BIFS : a sample with just BIFS
• JPEG : a sample with a JPEG

In each directory, there is:

• scene.scene : this is the TXT file, containing the BIFS text
• scene.script : this is the SCR file, containing the declaration of Object Descriptors
• do.bat : a batch file to invoke the above tools in proper order to regenerate the mp4 file (do not forget the streams
• scene.mp4 : the result of the execution of do.bat
• all.zip : contains all of the above in a zip

How to use mp4tool

You can get the tool from another page.

Before you load the samples, you need the streams which can download from this directory. You have to put the streams in a directory at the same level as the individual sample directories for the scripts to work. Information about the nhnt and info files is in the tools page.

Then you have some directories with samples:

• Audio : a sample with just audio, in a format for which there is a decoder available within the IM1 software, ie G723
• AudioVideo : a sample with audio and video, in a format for which there is a decoder available within the IM1 software, ie G723 and H263
• BIFS : a sample with just BIFS
• JPEG : a sample with a JPEG
• bifsq : a sample with some quantized BIFS
• m4v : a sample with an MPEG-4 video

In each directory, there is:

• scene.bt : this is the text file, containing the BIFS text as well as the declaration of Object Descriptors
• do.bat : a batch file to invoke the above tools in proper order to regenerate the mp4 file (do not forget the streams
• scene.mp4 : the result of the execution of do.bat
• all.zip : contains all of the above in a zip

How to teach yourself other tricks

1. Get "The MPEG-4 Book" (Prentice-Hall, Pereira & Ebrahimi, editors) and read the BIFS chapter.
2. Get the Systems conformance streams for this site and:
   • get mp4tool
   • decode each interesting mp4 into bt
   • export interesting media from those mp4
   • fiddle with the BIFS as much as you want
   • repackage the whole in an MP4 file
   • test
   • do it again until it works ;-)

Page maintained by Jean-Claude Dufourd and the MPEG-4 Tools and Services team