INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11
CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N12183
July 2011, Torino, Italy

Reconfigurable Video Coding Vision

With its Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standards, MPEG offers the means to overcome the lack of interoperability between the many video codecs deployed in the market.

RVC solves this problem by defining two standards

1. A language with which a video decoder can be described (ISO/IEC23001-4 or MPEG-B pt. 4)
2. A library of video coding tools employed in MPEG standards (ISO/IEC23002-4 or MPEG-C pt. 4).

A particular decoder description includes the description of how video coding tools are connected and of the bitstream syntax and parsing. The figure below shows how a specific decoding solution can then be built using the decoder description and the necessary tools drawn from an implementation of the MPEG-C pt. 4 tool library for a specific platform (see Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1 – Building an RVC-based decoding solution

The MPEG-C pt. 4 library is not static as it can be augmented with new tools coming from either new MPEG standards or from a rigorous process designed to assess the merit of new tools submitted by interested parties to MPEG that have been shown to provide improvements in at least one decoder configuration.

A tool identification mechanism defined in the RVC standard supports the usage of tools from multiple tool libraries. Therefore companies and organisations are free to define their own video coding tools and libraries and register them with an ISO-appointed Registration Authority. However, MPEG disclaims the technical qualification of those tools.

Assume now that an MPEG library (toolbox 1) and two proprietary libraries (toolboxes 2 and 3) have been developed for a specific platform: A service provider can distribute video content for three types of decoders implemented in that platform (see Fig. 2 below)

Fig. 2 – Building different decoders based on the RVC standard

• Decoder 1 is a decoding solution based on MPEG-B pt. 4 that employs tools drawn from the MPEG tool library of MPEG-C pt. 4 (toolbox 1)
• Decoder 2 is a decoding solution based on MPEG-B pt. 4 that employs tools drawn from the MPEG-C pt. 4 toollibrary (toolbox 1) and a proprietary library (toolbox 2)
• Decoder 3 is a decoding solution based on MPEG-B pt. 4 using tools drawn from a proprietary tool library (toolbox 3)   

Please note that all the three decoders are “MPEG decoders”, with the following understanding,

• Decoder 1 may conform to MPEG-B pt. 4 and MPEG-C pt. 4 and to a specific MPEG standard if the decoder solution uses only the tools prescribed in that MPEG standard
• In any case decoder 1 conforms to MPEG-B pt. 4 and MPEG-C pt. 4
• Decoders 2 and 3 only conform to MPEG-B pt. 4

Therefore a decoder solution based on the RVC standard can have 3 levels of conformance

1. To MPEG-C pt. 4
2. To MPEG-C pt. 4 and MPEG-B pt. 4
3. To MPEG-C pt. 4, MPEG-B pt. 4 and to a specific MPEG Video coding standard.