MPEG Focuses on the Next Generation of Video
Celebrates an Emmy for Video’s Current State of the Art  

Busan, KR – The 86^th MPEG meeting was held in Busan, Korea from 13 to 17 October 2008.

Highlights of the 86^th Meeting

 Joint Video Team Receives Primetime Emmy Award for AVC High Profile

 At this meeting MPEG celebrated the 2008 Primetime Emmy Engineering award given to the Joint Video Team (JVT) with the ITU-T's Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG).  The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has acclaimed the development of the High Profile of ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) as being among the "developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the transmission, recording or reception of television".  The award was presented to the JVT at a ceremony in Hollywood, Los Angeles on August 23, 2008.

 "We are very proud to see this recognition for the great work of the JVT", said Leonardo Chiariglione, the Convener of MPEG.  "AVC is a great example of the technical excellence of standards developed by MPEG, and the JVT partnership with ITU-T VCEG is a great example of MPEG's collaboration with other organizations for standardization development."  This was the second Emmy awarded for MPEG standardization achievements.  The previous Emmy was awarded in 1996 for the development of the MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and JPEG standards.

MPEG Considers the Development of HVC - the Next Generation Video Coding Standard

During its 86th meeting, MPEG hosted a workshop featuring talks and reports made by several video coding and industry experts with the goal of identifying future challenges and trends in video coding. Topics of discussion included video coding for next-generation networks, as well as reports on developments in displays, packaged media, and new compression technology. The most significant conclusion of the workshop is that video bit rate (when current compression technology is used) will increase at a rate faster than network infrastructures will be able to economically carry, both for wireless and wired networks. MPEG has therefore determined that the next generation of video compression technology is needed to meet these demands in bit rate.  Such video technology would need to have compression capability that is clearly higher than the existing AVC standard in its best configuration, the High Profile. As a consequence, a study has been launched on the feasibility of High-Performance Video Coding (HVC), which is mainly targeted for high quality and high to ultra-high definition applications. As a first step, a Call for Testing Materials has been issued.  A Call for Evidence related to new compression technology will also be issued in the near future.

MPEG Develops New Model for Applying 3D Graphics Compression

MPEG has finalized Part 25 of MPEG-4 to standardize a new model for applying 3D graphics compression to arbitrary scene graphs. The goal of the standard is twofold: to liberate the powerful MPEG compression techniques from the scene graph representation (previously restricted to Binary Format for Scene (BIFS)) and to position the compression as a transparent layer in the 3D graphics chain, thus making it easier to integrate with third party authoring tools and end-user applications. In addition, intrinsic features of the compression tools such as progressive decoding or streaming are preserved. Currently implemented on top of COLLADA, X3D, and XMT, the proposed model will leverage the deployment of MPEG-4 compression for 3D graphics. The reference software implementation, publicly available under ISO license, covers both encoder and decoders.

MPEG Identifies Requirements and Calls for Proposals for MPEG-V

At its 86^th meeting, MPEG has published the requirements (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10235) and issued a call for proposals (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10236) for an "MPEG-V" project to standardize intermediate formats and protocols for the exchange of information between the (real) physical and virtual worlds.  Specifically, the goal of the new "Information exchange with Virtual Worlds" project is to provide a standardized global framework and associated data representations to enable the interoperability between virtual worlds (e.g. a digital content provider of a Virtual World, a game with the exchange of real currency, or a simulator) with the real world (sensors, actuators, robotics, travel, real estate, or other physical systems).  MPEG invites all parties with relevant technologies for MPEG-V to submit these technologies for consideration.  For more information, refer to the above documents, which are available at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm.

MPEG Launches Project for Rich User Interface Framework

At its 86^th meeting, MPEG has also published the requirements (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10231) and issued a call for proposals (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10232) for the MPEG Rich Media User Interface (UI) Framework.  The MPEG Rich Media UI Framework targets the standardization of widget packaging and representation formats. These formats will enable operators and manufacturers to interoperate and consistently deliver a rich experience across consumer electronics, mobile devices, and beyond. The key features of the MPEG Rich Media UI Framework include: the application to a broad range of possible domains such as the home network, broadcast, web and mobile domains; the ability to stream updates to the user interface on a regular basis; and the integration of a wide variety of media types such as audio, video, text, 2D and 3D graphics.  MPEG invites all parties with relevant technologies for the Rich Media UI Framework to submit these technologies to MPEG for consideration. Addition details are available in the above mentioned documents.

Image Retrieval and Identification Enabled for Web and Large Databases

A new amendment that enables easy image retrieval and identification (such as in large databases or the web) has been added to the Visual part of MPEG-7. This amendment defines a description technology for Image Signatures that makes the search and retrieval of images that are similar in nature, or are modified versions of other images, straightforward to perform.  The new technology exploits a highly compact description – thereby enabling high-speed searches even in the case of very large databases. The method in the standard is remarkably robust under various modifications, such as illumination and colour changes, filtering, compression, and various types of geometric modifications, including heavy cropping of images. Currently, another Call for Proposals has been issued for the definition of video signatures.

Other Notable Accomplishments of the 86th Meeting

MPEG Produces Multiple Application Format Standards

Professional Archival Application Format

MPEG has delivered the final standard for the Professional Archival Application Format (ISO/IEC 23000-6) which defines a packaging format for digital files. This standard will fulfill the industry need for an interoperable multimedia content archival format for the preservation of multimedia content. Several advanced features of the standard include comprehensive metadata to model all information necessary to support and preserve digital files, a flexible mechanism to pre-process digital files prior to their storage in archives, and a robust file format to allow easy access to both metadata and archived files.

Video Surveillance Application Format

The Video Surveillance Application Format (ISO/IEC 23000-10), which reached its final stage at the 86^th MPEG meeting, provides a lightweight and useful wrapper for MPEG video technologies that serves the needs of the video surveillance market.   Major features of this application format include the packaging of visual data and associated metadata, and selective access to the visual data and metadata.

Stereoscopic Video Application Format

To address emerging stereoscopic video applications, MPEG has recently completed the development of a new application format standard (ISO/IEC 23000-11) – the Stereoscopic Video Application Format. Although several consumer electronics devices have been recently introduced in the market to meet the rapidly-growing user demands to capture pictures and video sequences, a lack of a common file format has restricted the exchange of this data.  The new MPEG Stereoscopic Video Application Format provides a solution to this problem in the form of an interoperable storage format for stereoscopic video and associated audio, images, and metadata. By providing a common interoperable file format for these data, users can exchange data that previously were restricted to storage and display on the devices on which they were acquired (such as mobile phones).

MPEG Formalizes Media Value Chain Ontology

MPEG achieved the first step of defining a standard (ISO/IEC 21000-19) for Media Value Chain Ontology. It provides a representation of a core model of a knowledge domain for which a detailed description allows for consistent and systematic specialization. The representation of ontologies can be formalized for computer processing in the form of a listing of the relevant classes, object properties, data-type properties, and class individuals.

MPEG Standard Integrates Structured Information for Rich User Experiences

MPEG has completed the first step towards standardizing (ISO/IEC 14496-20 AMD3) the integration of metadata for rich user experiences for emerging multimedia services such as IPTV.  For IPTV services, the provisioning of services and content using very detailed metadata is of primary importance, and the key to success is to provide a rich representation of such information to enable the user to select among these services and content based on their personal interests.   The new standard will facilitate the integration of structured metadata with rich media presentation.

MPEG Supports Larger Formats for Visual Parts of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4

During the 86th meeting, MPEG has also finalized amendments to the MPEG-2 (ITU-T H.262 | ISO/IEC 13818-2) and MPEG-4 Visual (ISO/IEC 14496-2) standards to add support for larger formats:  1920x1080p@50/60 Hz for the MPEG-2 Main Profile and 4Kx2K for the MPEG-4 Simple Studio Profile). 

Contact MPEG

Digging Deeper Once Again

Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. The experts past and present have contributed a series of white-papers that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, so if something you are interested is not there yet, it may appear there shortly – but you should also not hesitate to request it. You can start your MPEG adventure at: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/mpeg-tech.htm

Further Information

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

No. 87, Lausanne, CH, 02-06 February, 2009

No. 88, Maui, Hawaii, USA, 20-24 April, 2009

No. 89, London, UK, 29 June – 03 July, 2009

No. 90, Xian, CN, 26-30 October, 2009

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convener of MPEG, Italy)
Via Borgionera, 103
10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel:  +39 011 935 04 61
Email: mailto:leonardo@chiariglione.org

or

Dr. Arianne T. Hinds
Ricoh | IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company
6300 Diagonal Highway, MS 04N
Boulder, CO 80301, USA
Tel +1 303 924 6984
Email: arianne@us.ibm.com

This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg

The text and details related to the Calls mentioned above (together with other current Calls) are in the Hot News section, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to the Calls.

The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by those who are not MPEG members.

Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Arianne T. Hinds using the contact information provided above.