Motion JPEG (MJPEG or M-JPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced ground of a digital video sequence (including video and metadata such as subtitles and closed captioning) is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, MJPEG is now used by video-seize devices such as digital cameras, IP cameras, webcams, and by nonlinear video editing systems. It is supported by the QuickTime Player, the PlayStation console and browsers such as Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. MJPEG was first used by the QuickTime Player in the mid-1990s.
MJPEG is an intra-frame-single-handedly compression plot. Because frames are compressed independently of one substitute, MJPEG imposes lower handing out and memory requirements harshly speaking hardware devices. As such, the image-environment of MJPEG is directly a objection of each video frame’s spatial complexity. Frames as soon as large mild-transitions or monotone surfaces compress competently and are more likely to accord their indigenous detail subsequent to few visible compression artifacts. Frames exhibiting unapproachable textures, fine curves and lines are prone to exhibit DCT artifacts such a ringing, smudging and macroblocking. This gives MJPEG an advantage taking into consideration again interframe compression schemes, which attain not accommodate sudden pursuit with frames and require more hardware to meet the memory demands of interframe compression.
MJPEG is frequently used in non-linear video editing systems. Desktop CPUs are powerful sufficient to play in behind high-definition video thus no special hardware is required and they in viewpoint meet the expense of native random-entrance to a frame. MJPEG maintain is moreover widespread in video capture and editing equipment, allowing for easy file-sharing for uses such as archiving and transcription.
Prior to the recent rise in MPEG-4 encoding in consumer devices, a well ahead scan form of MJPEG saying widespread use in the movie modes of digital still cameras, allowing video encoding and playback through the integrated JPEG compression hardware following lonesome software modification. The AMV video format is a modified relation of MJPEG.
Many network-enabled cameras meet the expense of MJPEG streams that network clients can membership up to. Mozilla and Webkit-based browsers have native retain for viewing MJPEG streams. Some network-enabled cameras offer their own MJPEG interfaces as portion of the gratifying feature set. For cameras that don’t apportion this feature natively, a server can be used to transcode the camera pictures into an MJPEG stream and subsequently be of the same opinion that stream to optional optional accessory network clients.