Versatile Video Coding (VVC) project starts strongly in the Joint Video Experts Team
San Diego, CA, USA – The 122nd MPEG meeting was held in San Diego, CA, USA, from 16 – 20 April 2018
Versatile Video Coding (VVC) project starts strongly in the Joint Video Experts Team
The Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), a collaborative team formed by MPEG and ITU-T Study Group 16's VCEG commenced work on a new video coding standard to be known as Versatile Video Coding (VVC) at this meeting. The primary objective of VVC is to provide a significant improvement in compression performance over the existing HEVC standard, aiding in deployment of higher-quality video services and emerging applications such as 360° omnidirectional immersive multimedia and high-dynamic-range (HDR) video. The development of the VVC standard is expected to be completed in 2020. The two bodies issued a joint Call for Proposals, and the responses were evaluated at the San Diego meeting. Responses to the call were received from 32 organizations, with some demonstrating compression efficiency gains of typically 40% or more when compared to using HEVC. The gain was measured in extensive formal subjective tests conducted by independent test labs. Both 360° omnidirectional video and HDR video were tested as well as conventional dynamic range video. Particular effectiveness was shown on ultra-high definition (UHD) video test material. The results of this very successful call led to creation of a first draft, a test model for simulation experiments, and a technology benchmark set for the VVC project. The new standard is expected to enable the delivery of UHD services at bit rates that today are used to carry HDTV. Alternatively, using VVC would enable twice as much video content to be stored on a server or sent through a streaming service.
MPEG-G standards reach Draft International Standard for transport and compression technologies
The extensive usage of high-throughput deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing technologies opens up new perspectives in the treatment of several diseases and enables “precision medicine”. As DNA sequencing technologies produce extremely large amounts of raw data, the ICT costs for the storage, transmission, and processing of DNA sequence data and related information, result to be very high due to the lack of universal standards preventing timely application of effective treatments.
The MPEG-G standard jointly developed by MPEG and ISO Technical Committee for biotechnology standards (ISO TC 276/WG 5) is the first international standard to address and solve the problem of efficient and cost-effective handling of genomic data by providing, not only new compression and transport technologies, but also a family of standard specifications associating relevant information in the form of metadata and a rich set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for building a full ecosystem of interoperable applications and services capable of efficiently processing sequencing data.
At its 122nd meeting, MPEG promoted its core set of MPEG-G specifications, i.e., transport and compression technologies, to Draft International Standard (DIS) stage. Such parts of the standard provide new transport technologies (ISO/IEC 23092-1) and compression technologies (ISO/IEC 23092-2) supporting rich functionality for the access and transport including streaming of genomic data by interoperable applications. This will enable the industry to rely on a final specification in October 2018. Reference software (ISO/IEC 23092-4) and conformance (ISO/IEC 23092-5) will reach this stage in the next 12 months.
Beside standardization achievements, a workshop on the “applications of genomic information processing” has been held in conjunction with the 122nd MPEG meeting discussing requirements, open problems of genome information processing, and solutions provided by MPEG-G standards. Use cases representative of selective remote access with streaming and the execution of the Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) and equivalent processing pipelines using sequencing data in MPEG-G compressed forms have also been demonstrated.
MPEG issues Call for Proposals on Network-based Media Processing
Recent developments in multimedia have brought significant innovation and disruption to the way multimedia content is created and consumed. With the emergence of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) applications, users can interact with and navigate within the consumed content along multiple degrees of freedom. At its 122nd meeting, MPEG has issued a Call for Proposals (CfP) on Network-based Media Processing (MPEG-I part 8). This CfP addresses advanced media processing technologies (e.g., network stitching for VR service, super resolution for enhanced visual quality, transcoding, viewport extraction for 360° video) within the network environment that allows service providers and end users to describe media processing operations that are to be performed by the network. To achieve this objective, MPEG is working on a NBMP standard that will allow end user devices to offload certain kinds of processing to the network. NBMP describes the composition of network-based media processing services out of a set of network-based media processing functions and makes these network-based media processing services accessible through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Responses to the NBMP CfP will be evaluated on the weekend prior to and decisions made at the 123rd MPEG meeting in July 2018 (Ljubljana, SI).
MPEG finalizes 7th edition of MPEG-2 Systems Standard
At its 122nd meeting, MPEG promoted a new edition of its award-winning MPEG-2 Systems standard to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS), the final stage of development. As MPEG-2 Systems is one of the most crucial standard for various digital media services, it has been constantly revised to support additional features after its first publication. The currently published 6th edition was a result of incremental integration of 29 amendments to the first edition in 1996. The new edition will integrate three amendments to the 6th edition. Technologies to be integrated in this edition include support of transport of JPEG 2000 video with 4K resolution and ultra-low latency, carriage of media orchestration related metadata, carriage of sample variance, and carriage of HEVC tiles.
MPEG enhances ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF) with two new features
At its 122nd meeting, MPEG has promoted two new technologies enhancing the power of ISOBMFF to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS), the final stage of development.
The Partial File Format (ISO/IEC 23001-14) enables the description of an ISOBMFF file partially received over lossy communication channels. It is intended to serve as a storage and exchange format for other file formats delivered over lossy channels. The format provides tools to describe reception data, the received data and document transmission information such as received or lost byte ranges and whether the corrupted/lost bytes are present in the file and repair information such as location of the source file, possible byte offsets in that source, byte stream position at which a parser can try processing a corrupted file. Depending on the communication channel, this information may be setup by the receiver or through out-of-band means.
Another technology that has been promoted to the final stage is the 2nd edition of storage of sample variants (ISO/IEC 23001-12). Sample variants are typically used to provide forensic information in the rendered sample data that can, for example, identify the specific Digital Rights Management (DRM) client which has decrypted the content. This variant framework is intended to be fully compatible with MPEG’s Common Encryption (CENC), as specified by ISO/IEC 23001-7, and agnostic to the particular forensic marking system used.
How to contact MPEG, learn more, and find other MPEG facts
To learn about MPEG basics, discover how to participate in the committee, or find out more about the array of technologies developed or currently under development by MPEG, visit MPEG’s home page at https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/. There you will find information publicly available from MPEG experts past and present including tutorials, white papers, vision documents, and requirements under consideration for new standards efforts. You can also find useful information in many public documents by using the search window including publicly available output documents of each meeting (note: some may have editing periods and in case of questions please contact Dr. Christian Timmerer).
Examples of tutorials that can be found there include tutorials for: High Efficiency Video Coding, Advanced Audio Coding, Universal Speech and Audio Coding, and DASH to name a few. A rich repository of white papers can also be found and continues to grow. You can find these papers and tutorials for many of MPEG’s standards freely available. Press releases from previous MPEG meetings are also available. Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Christian Timmerer at christian.timmerer@itec.uni-klu.ac.at or christian.timmerer@bitmovin.com.
Further Information
Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:
No. 123, Ljubljana, SI, 16 – 20 July 2018
No. 124, Macau, CN, 08 – 12 October 2018
No. 125, Marrakech, MA, 14 – 18 January 2019
No. 126, Geneva, CH, 18 – 22 March 2019
For further information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convenor of MPEG, Italy)
Via Borgionera, 103
I-10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel: +39 011 935 04 61
or
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Christian Timmerer
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt | Bitmovin Inc.
9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria, Europe
Tel: +43 463 2700 3621
Email: christian.timmerer@itec.aau.at | christian.timmerer@bitmovin.com
Please note the following
- The main meeting (2018/04/16-20) will be preceded by meetings of
- VET (from Tuesday 10 April)
- JCT – VC (from Friday 13 April)
- VCEG (from Saturday 14 April)
- MPEG Ad hoc Groups (Saturday and Sunday 14 – 15 April)
- The main meeting will be followed by a meeting of SC29 on 21 April (Saturday)
Meeting Venue
All meetings will be held at the San Diego Marriott La Jolla.
4240 La Jolla Village Drive
San Diego, California, USA 92037
P: +1-858-587-1414 | F: 858-546-8518
Meeting Web Site
Meeting information, registration, hotel information and local information can be found at the following web site.
http://2018isoiec.regstep.com/home/page/index
Meeting Host
INCITS L3 (InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards. Coding of Audio, Picture, Multimedia and Hypermedia Information)
Meeting Organizer
Julie Higgins
Meeting Planit
jhiggins@meetingplanit.com
Phone & Fax: +1-612-922-5986
Destination Information
Located within the area's famous Golden Triangle, the hotel is conveniently located directly off major freeways (I-805 and I-5) 24 km north of San Diego International Airport (SAN) and
within easy reach of many of downtown La Jolla's most popular attractions, as well as the University of California at San Diego. For those who want to explore the area Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the La Jolla Cove, and the beach are within a few minutes of the hotel.
Social Event
All registered attendees are invited to the Wednesday evening social on 18 April from 18:30 to 22:00 at the Scripps Seaside Forum.
Travel Documents and Visas
If an invitation letter is required:
- Fill out the request form
- Please send completed form to ANSI to receive an official invitation letter. One form per delegate.
Registration and Information Desk
The registration and information desk hours are: Monday, 9 April to Saturday, 21 April 2018 from 08:00 to 18:0
Name Badges: You will receive your name badge upon check-in at the Registration and Information Desk. Your name badge is required for admittance into meeting rooms, breakfasts and breaks.
Facilities Fee
The facilities fee includes:
- meeting rooms with wireless Internet access, A/V equipment and power plugs
- daily continental breakfast and two coffee breaks
- a dedicated, staffed registration and information desk
Price changes occur at midnight (23:59) Pacific time on 8 March 2018. You must complete your registration before that time to receive the early bird rate.
$600.00 USD early birds, until 8 March 2018
$700.00 USD regular on or after 9 March 2018
Additional tickets for social will be made available for $50.
To register for the meeting, click here.
To reserve hotel rooms, click here.
Cancellation Policy
Cancellations before 13 March 2018: 100% refund
Cancellations on or after 13 March 2018 and before 10 April, 2018: 70% refund
Cancellations on or after 10 April: no refund
Hotel Guest Room Cancellation
Refunds will be made only on reservations cancelled more than 72 hours prior to arrival. There will be a one (1) night charge for any reservation cancelled within 72 hours of your arrival date.
Currency/Credit Cards
The facilities fee may be pre-paid by Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express credit cards, or by company check or wire. Alternatively, you may pay with US dollars or travelers checks on site.
Accommodations
4240 La Jolla Village Drive
San Diego, California, USA 92037
P: +1-858-587-1414 | F: 858-546-8518
The hotel accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners and Discover cards. A bank money dispensing machine is located in the hotel.
To make hotel reservations, click here.
The group rate is $179.00 per night, plus tax. The group rate will be available until March 23, 2018.
Hotel Guest Room Cancellation: Refunds will be made only on reservations cancelled more than 72 hours prior to arrival. There will be a one (1) night charge for any reservation cancelled within 72 hours of your arrival date.
Getting to the Hotel
The hotel does not provide complimentary transportation from the San Diego Airport. However, several shuttle companies are located right outside baggage claim – after claiming your luggage, walk outside toward hotel shuttle signs, then look for La Jolla hotels (only). Shuttles run every 18-25 minutes.
By Car from the San Diego International Airport
North on I-5. Exit La Jolla Village Drive and turn right toward East. Turn left on Regents Road and immediately turn right to Regent Park Row. Hotel driveway is on the right hand side.
On-site Parking without hotel stay
Self-parking: $4.00/hour, $30.00/daily
Valet Daily: $36.00
Discounted parking with hotel stay
Self-parking: $10.00 per night
Overnight valet: $35.00 per night
Hotel Amenities
Radio and Alarm clocks with MP3
High Speed wired and wireless internet
Remote guest room printing
Coffeemaker and complimentary coffee
Five in-hotel dining options with many restaurants within walking distance
Outdoor swimming pool, hot tub and fitness center
Local Area Information
San Diego is California's second largest city, with more than 70 miles of majestic coastline and a gentle Mediterranean climate. Bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Anza-Borrego Desert and the Laguna Mountains to the east, and Mexico to the south, the diverse neighborhoods of San Diego are spread out over 4,200 square miles, offering endless opportunities for exploration and activities.
La Jolla
The coastal village of La Jolla, appropriately meaning "The Jewel" in Spanish, is one of the most popular and picturesque destinations in the world. With a dramatic coastline ideal for swimming, surfing, diving, kayaking, and snorkeling, La Jolla's beaches are just one of the features that make this village a highly desirable destination for visitors. La Jolla offers world-class shopping and dining experiences, from designer boutiques and art galleries, to critically acclaimed restaurants featuring celebrity chefs. La Jolla's cultural offerings include the renowned Birch Aquarium at Scripps, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and La Jolla Playhouse. There are many restaurants within walking distance from the meeting venue.
Local Attractions
Veterans Memorial Walls at Mt. Soledad
More Activities
- Bike rentals 1.1 miles
- Biking trail 2 miles
- Bowling 4.4 miles
- Hiking 4 miles
- Horseback riding 4.7 miles
- Jet-skiing 8 miles
- Jogging/fitness trail 2 miles
- Kayaking 8 miles
- Miniature golf 4 miles
- Nature preserve, trail 4 miles
- Rock climbing 3 miles
- Sailing 10 miles
- Sauna 0.1 miles
- Squash 0.5 miles
- Surfing 5 miles
- Volleyball 2.8 miles
- Water-skiing 8 miles
- Snow skiing 90 miles
- Snow skiing 330 miles
- Tennis 0.1 miles
Time Zone
La Jolla (San Diego) is on Pacific Standard Time (PST) and 8 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time.
Climate
The average April temperature is 19.7°C high and 13.3°C low.
Electricity
The voltage in California is 110V. Two-pin plugs are standard.