Theory 101:

A Basic Guide to Transport Streams

Transport Stream Structure
Tables
Timecodes
Video Structure
Terminology


Introduction

A transport stream is a container which can carry multiple audio, video, subtitle streams as well as other data streams

Origins

The transport stream standards were produced by the MPEG committe initially to carry MPEG 1 and 2 streams.
Transport streams have been widely adopted by the Broadcast and Movie industry and the standard has been extended to allow for many new Audio and Video codecs including the very latest high definition formats found on Blu-Ray.
The official standard is called ISO-13818-1.

Sources

The most common sources of Transport Streams are from Broadcast, Blu-Ray discs and Camcorders.

TSPE

TSPE is an advanced Editor and Analyser for Transport Streams.