MPEG explores new frontiers for coding technologies with Genome Compression

Geneva, CH − The 113^th MPEG meeting was held in Geneva, CH, from 19 – 23 October 2015

MPEG issues Call for Evidence (CfE) for Genome Compression and Storage

At its 113^th meeting, MPEG has taken its first formal step toward leveraging its compression expertise to code an entirely new kind of essential information, i.e. the single recipe that describes each one of us as an individual — the human genome.  A genome is comprised of the DNA sequences that may contain up to 300 billion DNA pairs, that make up the genetic information within each human cell.  It is fundamentally the complete set of our hereditary information. 

To aid in the representation and storage of this unique information, MPEG has issued a Call for Evidence (CfE) on Genome Compression and Storage with the goal to assess the performance of new technologies for the efficient compression of genomic information when compared to currently used file formats. This is vitally important because the amount of genomic and related information from a sequences can be as high as several Tbytes (trillion bytes).

Additional purposes of the call are to:

• become aware of which additional functionalities (e.g. non sequential access, lossy compression efficiency, etc. ) are provided by these new technologies
• collect information that may be used in drafting a future Call for Proposals

Responses to the CfE will be evaluated during the 114th MPEG meeting in February 2016.

Detailed information, including how to respond to the CfE, will soon be available as documents N15740 and N15739 at the 113th meeting website.

Future Video Coding workshop explores requirements and technologies for the next video codec

A workshop on Future Video Coding Applications and Technologies was held on October 21st, 2015 during the 113^th MPEG meeting in Geneva. The workshop was organized to acquire relevant information about the context in which video coding will be operating in the future, and to review the status of existing technologies with merits beyond the capabilities of HEVC, with the goal of guiding future codec standardization activity.

The event featured speakers from the MPEG community and invited outside experts from industry and academia, and covered several topics related to video coding. Prof. Patrick Le Callet from the University of Nantes presented recent results in the field of objective and subjective video quality evaluation. Various applications of video compression were introduced by Prof. Doug Young Suh from Kyung Hee University, Stephan Wenger from Vidyo, Jonatan Samuelsson from Ericsson, and Don Wu from HiSilicon. Dr. Stefano Andriani presented the Digital Cinema Workflow from ARRI. Finally, Debargha Mukherjee from Google and Tim Terriberry from Mozilla gave an overview of recent algorithmic improvements in the development of the VP10 and Daala codecs, and discussed the motivation for the royalty-free video compression technologies developed by their companies.

The workshop took place at a very timely moment when MPEG and VCEG (ITU-T SG16 Q9) experts decided to join efforts in developing extensions of the HEVC standard for HDR.

MPEG‑V 3^rd Edition reaches FDIS status for communication between actors in virtual and physical worlds

Parts 1‑6 of the 3^rd Edition of MPEG‑V, to be published as ISO/IEC 23005‑[1‑6]:2016, have reached FDIS status — the final stage in the development of a standard prior to formal publication by ISO/IEC — at the 113^th MPEG meeting. MPEG‑V specifies the architecture and associated representations to enable interaction between digital content and virtual worlds with the physical one, as well as information exchange between virtual worlds. Features of MPEG‑V enable the specification of multi-sensorial content associated with audio/video data, and control of multimedia applications via advanced interaction devices. In this 3^rd Edition, MPEG‑V also includes technology for environmental and camera-related sensors, and 4D-theater effects.

Configurable decoder framework extended with new bitstream parser

The Reconfigurable Media Coding framework — MPEG’s toolkit that enables the expression of a functions of a decoder in terms of functional units and data models — has been extended by a novel new building block, called Parser Instantiation from BSD. Parser Instantiation from BSD can interpret information about a bitstream that is described via the Bitstream Syntax Description Language (defined in ISO/IEC 23001-5), and automatically instantiate a functional unit that is able to correctly parse the bitstream. This will, for example, enable on-the-fly decoding of bitstreams that have been reconfigured for dedicated purposes. The specification of the new technology will be included in a new edition of ISO/IEC 23001-4, which has also been issued by MPEG at its 113^th meeting.

Multimedia Preservation Application Format (MP-AF) is finalized

At the 113^th MPEG meeting, the Multimedia Preservation Application Format (MP-AF, ISO/IEC 23000-15) has reached the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage. This new standard provides standardized description information to enable users to plan, execute, and evaluate preservation operations (e.g., checking preserved content integrity, migrating preserved content from one system to another system, replicating subpart or entire preserved content, etc.) in order to achieve the objectives of digital preservation.  The standard also provides the industry with a coherent and consistent approach in managing multimedia preservation so that it can be implemented in a variety of scenarios. This includes applications, systems, and methods and different hardware and software in varying administrative domains, independent of technological changes.

Implementation guidelines and reference software for MP-AF are under development and have reached Draft Amendment stage at the 113^th MPEG meeting. This latest amendment contains examples of applying MP-AF to use cases from the media industry. The final International Standard of MP-AF is expected to be issued at the 114^th meeting (February 2016, San Diego).

Seminar for Genome Compression Standardization planned for the 114^th MPEG meeting

After its successful seminar on “Prospects on Genome Compression Standardization” held in Geneva during the 113^th meeting, MPEG plans to hold another open seminar at its next meeting in San Diego, California on 23^rd February 2016 to collect further input and perspectives on genome data standardization from parties interested in the acquisition and processing of genome data.

The main topics covered by the planned seminar presentations are:

• New approaches, tools and algorithms to compress genome sequence data
• Genome compression and genomic medicine applications
• Objectives and issues of quality scores compression and impact on downstream analysis applications

All interested parties are invited to join the seminar to learn more about genome data processing challenges and planned MPEG standardization activities in this area, share opinions, and work together towards the definition of standard technologies supporting improved storage, transport and new functionality for the processing of genomic information.

The seminar is open to the public and registration is free of charge.

Other logistic information on the 114th MPEG meeting are available online together with the detailed program of the Seminar.

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 http://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.

Examples of tutorials that can be found on the MPEG homepage 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. Arianne T. Hinds at a.hinds@cablelabs.com

Further Information

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

No. 114, San Diego, CA, USA, 22 – 26 February 2016

No. 115, Geneva, CH, 30 – 03 May – June 2016

No. 116, Chengdu, CN, 17 – 21 October 2016

No. 117, Geneva, CH, 16 – 20 January, 2017

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convenor of MPEG, Italy)

Via Borgionera, 103

10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy

Tel: +39 011 935 04 61

leonardo@chiariglione.org

or

Dr. Arianne T. Hinds

Cable Television Laboratories

858 Coal Creek Circle

Louisville, Colorado 80027 USA

Tel: +1 303 661 3419

a.hinds@cablelabs.com.