INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11
CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 N12060
July 2011 – Torino, IT

 

MPEG targets internet usage models with new video coding standard

Torino, IT – The 97^th MPEG meeting was held in Torino, Italy from the 18^th to the 22^nd of July 2011.

MPEG issues CfP for an Internet Video Coding Standard

MPEG has issued a Call for Proposals (CfP) for Internet Video Coding Technologies to develop a standard that could become the default video codec for internet applications because it will be in line with the expected usage models of the Internet. It is also expected that patent owners are prepared to grant a free-of-charge license to make, use, and sell implementations of such a standard, i.e. the standard is expected to be “royalty free”. The new standard is intended to achieve better compression performance than that offered by MPEG-2 and possibly comparable to that offered by the AVC Baseline Profile. Proposals are due in October 2011 and will be evaluated at the 98th MPEG meeting in Geneva.  MPEG expects the standard to be complete July 2013.  The text of the Call for Proposals is available at http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents/explorations/opt1-licence/opt1-lic-cfp.zip.

Unified Speech and Audio Coding progresses to Final Draft International Standard

At the 97^th meeting ISO/IEC 23003-3, Unified Speech and Audio Coding, has progressed to the stage of final draft international standard. This standard builds upon technology developed in prior MPEG audio standards and adds to that speech source coding technology to create a single, unified coder with performance that is comparable to that of the best speech coders for speech signals and to that of the best music coders for music signals. ````

Also at the 97^th meeting the Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC) Verification Test Report was made available. The tests included speech, music and speech mixed with music, and covered a wide range of bit rates: from 8 kbps to 96 kbps as well as both mono and stereo operating points. Statistical analysis of the test data resulted in the following conclusions:

• The goal of the work item was achieved, that is to produce a single coding technology which is always at least as good as the better of the state-of-the-art coders, namely HE-AACv2 and AMR-WB+, on any signal content type (speech, music and speech mixed with music).

• In fact, when considering any of the three content types, and of course for all signal content types grouped together, USAC is always better than the best codec tailored for general audio or speech (i.e. HE-AACv2 and AMR-WB+). This holds true for the whole range of bit rates tested from 8 kbps mono to 96 kbps stereo. For most bit rates tested this performance advantage is large.

• USAC provides a much more consistent quality across all signal content types than the other systems tested.

This new specification is expected to have application in any area in which low-bit-rate transmission or storage is necessary and audio content is an arbitrary mix of speech, speech plus music and music. It provides state-of-the-art performance over an extremely wide range of bit rates, from the low rates for mono signals through higher rates for multi-channel signals.

MPEG issues final CfP to standardize visual search technologies

In its latest step towards a standard for efficient and interoperable designs of visual search applications, MPEG has issued a final Call for Proposals at its 97th meeting. 

Specifically, the call seeks technologies that deliver robust matching of images of objects, such as landmarks, artworks, and text-based documents, that may be partially occluded or captured from various vantage points, and with different camera parameters, or lighting conditions.  The underlying component technologies that are expected to be addressed by the standard include the format of the visual descriptors, and parts of the descriptor extraction process needed to ensure interoperability.  Other component technologies, such as indexing and matching algorithms, may also be incorporated into the new standard.

The text of the Call for Proposals is available at http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents/explorations/cdvs/cdvs-cfp.zip.  Responses to this call are due shortly before and will be evaluated at the 98th MPEG meeting in Geneva. Information regarding the call's corresponding evaluation framework is available at http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents/explorations/cdvs/cdvs_framework.zip.

MPEG makes depth estimation and view synthesis software publicly available

At its 97th meeting, MPEG has decided to make publicly available, under the GNU General Public License, software that participating members have contributed as part of MPEG's exploration on 3D video coding.  Specifically, these software modules determine depth information from multiple input views and use this information to synthesize new viewpoints of the scene. Such operations could be used for advanced stereoscopic processing, for example, to adjust the perceived depth of a 3D scene, or to render the many views needed to drive an auto-stereoscopic display.    The software package is expected to be available by mid-August 2011 at http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/working_documents.htm.

MPEG adds support of progressive transmissions for 3D objects

At its 97th meeting, MPEG enriched the 3D graphics toolset of the MPEG-4 Part 16 (ISO/IEC 14496-16) standard by promoting an amendment supporting the coding of 3D meshes utilizing a multi-resolution approach. This representation enables the progressive transmissions of static 3D objects, starting from a coarse mesh and adding details to reconstruct the mesh at higher resolutions. The main purpose is to enable the control of the reconstructed mesh resolution with respect to the conditions imposed by the transmission bandwidth, terminal characteristics and position of the object in the 3D scene. 

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Digging Deeper – How to Contact MPEG

Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. Experts, past and present, have contributed a series of tutorials and vision documents 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://mpeg.chiariglione.org/technologies.htm.

Further Information

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

No. 98	Geneva	CH	28 November – 2 December	2011
No. 99	San Jose	USA	6 – 10 February	2012
No. 100	Geneva	CH	30 April – 04 May	2012
No. 101	Stockholm	SE	16 – 20 July	2012
No. 102	Suzhou	CN	15 – 19 October	2012

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

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

http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/

The text and details related current Calls are in the Hot News section, http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to 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 at arianne.hinds@infoprint.com.