packetized elementary stream (PES)

The Packetized Elementary Stream (PES) forms the packetized and encapsulated transport stream(TS) of MPEG-2. Only after encapsulation does the PES stream become the transport stream for digital TV.

The Packetized Elementary Stream itself is formed from the Elementary Stream( ES), through packetization. The latter in turn from the multiplexed and compressed video and audio signals.

The Packetized Elementary Stream data packets consist of a header and the payload, the PES Packet Data Bytes. The PES header comprises 6 bytes, three of which are used as the start code, followed by a 1-bytedata field for the stream ID and a two- byte data field for the PES Packet Length.