MPEG starts strongly in coding and compression for Three Degrees of Freedom Plus (3DoF+)
Geneva, Switzerland – The 126th MPEG meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 25 – 29 March 2019
Three Degrees of Freedom Plus (3DoF+) – MPEG evaluates responses to the Call for Proposal and starts a new project on Metadata for Immersive Video
Support for 360-degree video, also called omnidirectional video, has been standardized in the Omnidirectional Media Format (OMAF; ISO/IEC 23090‑2) and Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) messages for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC; ISO/IEC 23008‑2). These standards can be used for delivering immersive visual content. However, rendering flat 360-degree video may generate visual discomfort when objects close to the viewer are rendered. The interactive parallax feature of Three Degrees of Freedom Plus (3DoF+) will provide viewers with visual content that more closely mimics natural vision, but within a limited range of viewer motion. A typical 3DoF+ use case is a user sitting on a chair (or similar position) looking at stereoscopic omnidirectional virtual reality (VR) content on a head mounted display (HMD) with the capability to move her head in any direction.
At its 126th meeting, MPEG received five responses to the Call for Proposals (CfP) on 3DoF+ Visual. Subjective evaluations showed that adding the interactive motion parallax to 360-degree video will be possible. Based on the subjective and objective evaluation, a new project was launched, which will be named Metadata for Immersive Video. A first version of a Working Draft (WD) and corresponding Test Model (TM) were designed to combine technical aspects from multiple responses to the call. The current schedule for the project anticipates Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) of ISO/IEC 23090-7 Immersive Metadata in July 2020.
Neural Network Compression for Multimedia Applications – MPEG evaluates responses to the Call for Proposal and kicks off its technical work
Artificial neural networks have been adopted for a broad range of tasks in multimedia analysis and processing, such as visual and acoustic classification, extraction of multimedia descriptors or image and video coding. The trained neural networks for these applications contain a large number of parameters (i.e., weights), resulting in a considerable size. Thus, transferring them to a number of clients using them in applications (e.g., mobile phones, smart cameras) requires compressed representation of neural networks.
At its 126th meeting, MPEG analyzed nine technologies submitted by industry leaders as responses to the Call for Proposals (CfP) for Neural Network Compression. These technologies address compressing neural network parameters for networks trained with multimedia data in order to reduce their size for transmission and the efficiency of using them, while not or only moderately reducing their performance in specific multimedia applications.
After a formal evaluation of submissions, MPEG identified three main technology components in the compression pipeline, which will be further studied in the development of the standard. A key conclusion is that with the proposed technologies, a compression to 10% or less of the original size can be achieved with no or negligible performance loss, where this performance is measured as classification accuracy in image and audio classification, matching rate in visual descriptor matching, and PSNR reduction in image coding. Some of these technologies also result in the reduction of the computational complexity of using the neural network or can benefit from specific capabilities of the target hardware (e.g., support for fixed point operations).
MPEG expects that the compression of neural networks for multimedia content description and analysis (ISO/IEC 15938-17) to reach Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) in April 2021.
Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding – MPEG evaluates responses to the Call for Proposal and selects a Test Model for further development
At its 126th meeting, after evaluating several responses to the Call for Proposals (CfP) issued last October, MPEG commenced work on a new standard to be known as Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC). The new standard is aimed at bridging the gaps between two successive generations of codecs by providing a codec-agile extension to existing video codecs that improves coding efficiency and can be readily deployed via software upgrade and with sustainable power consumption.
The target is to achieve (i) coding efficiency close to High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) Main 10 by leveraging Advanced Video Coding (AVC) Main Profile and (ii) coding efficiency close to upcoming next generation video codecs by leveraging HEVC Main 10. This coding efficiency should be achieved while maintaining overall encoding and decoding complexity lower than that of the leveraged codecs (i.e., AVC and HEVC, respectively) when used in isolation at full resolution. This target has been met, and one of the responses to the CfP will serve as starting point and test model for the standard.
The new standard is expected to become part of the ISO/IEC 23094 (General Video Coding) suite of codecs as Part 2 Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding and its development is expected to be completed in 2020.
Point Cloud Compression – MPEG promotes its Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression (G‑PCC) technology to the Committee Draft (CD) stage
At its 126th meeting, MPEG promoted its ISO/IEC 23090-5 Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression (G‑PCC) standard to Committee Draft (CD) stage. G‑PCC addresses lossless and lossy coding of time-varying 3D point clouds with associated attributes such as color and material properties. This technology is appropriate especially for sparse point clouds. ISO/IEC 23090-9 Video-based Point Cloud Compression (V‑PCC), which reached the CD stage in October 2018, addresses the same problem but for dense point clouds, by projecting the (typically dense) 3D point clouds onto planes, and then processing the resulting sequences of 2D images with video compression techniques. G‑PCC’s generalized approach, which directly codes the 3D geometry to exploit any redundancy found in the point cloud itself, is complementary to V‑PCC and particularly useful for sparse point clouds representing large environments.
Point clouds are typically represented by extremely large amounts of data, which is a significant barrier for mass market applications. However, the relative ease to capture and render spatial information compared to other volumetric video representations makes point clouds increasingly popular to present immersive volumetric data. The current implementation of a lossless, intra-frame G‑PCC encoder provides a compression ratio up to 10:1 and acceptable quality lossy coding of ratio up to 35:1.
By providing high-level immersiveness at currently available bitrates, the G‑PCC standard will enable several applications such as 3D mapping, indoor navigation, autonomous driving, advanced augmented reality (AR) with environmental mapping, and cultural heritage.
The G‑PCC CD can be found at http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/meetings/126.
MPEG Media Transport (MMT) – MPEG approves 3rd Edition of Final Draft International Standard
At its 126th meeting, MPEG has approved the 3rdedition of Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) of MPEG Media Transport (ISO/IEC 23008-1). It will introduce two important technologies to this standard: (i) enhancements for mobile environments and (ii) support of Contents Delivery Networks (CDNs). The support for multipath delivery will enable delivery of services over more than one network connection concurrently, which is specifically useful for mobile devices that can support more than one connection at a time. Additionally, support for intelligent network entities involved in media services (i.e., Media Aware Network Entity (MANE)) will make MMT-based services adapt to changes of the mobile network faster and better. Understanding the support for load balancing is an important feature of CDN-based content delivery, messages for DNS management, media resource update, and media request is being added in this edition. This edition is scheduled to be published within 2019. Furthermore, ongoing developments within MMT will add support for the usage of MMT over QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) and support of FCAST in the context of MMT.
MPEG-G standards reach Draft International Standard for Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and Metadata technologies
The extensive usage of high-throughput deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing technologies opens up new perspectives in the treatment of several diseases and enables the implementation of a new approach to healthcare known as “precision medicine”. DNA sequencing technologies produce extremely large amounts of raw data which are stored in different repositories worldwide. The processing, analysis, and comparison of such distributed data is a fundamental element for the effective usage of sequencing data for clinical and scientific purposes. Standard Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and Metadata, obviously, are the basis for interoperable and automated data access and processing systems that can efficiently operate on the worldwide available sets of sequencing data.
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 (ISO/IEC 23092-1/2), but also a standard specification associating relevant information in the form of metadata and a rich set of APIs for data access and mining, for building a full ecosystem of interoperable applications capable of efficiently processing sequencing data.
At its 127th meeting, MPEG promoted its third part of the MPEG-G specifications, Application Program Interfaces and Metadata (ISO/IEC 23092-3) to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage. Such part of the standard will enable the industry to rely on a final specification in October 2019.
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, short articles 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 or subscribe via https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/mpeg-pr. For timely updates follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mpeggroup).
Further Information
Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:
No. 127, Gothenburg, SE, 08 – 12 July 2019
No. 128, Geneva, CH, 07 – 11 October 2019
No. 129, Brussels, BE, 13 – 17 January 2020
No. 130, Alpbach, AT, 20 – 24 April 2020
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
The 126th WG 11 meeting will take place on 2019/03/25T09:00-29T20:00 at Centre International de Conférences de Genève, Genève, CH.
The meeting will be preceded by:
The JVET meeting starting on the 19th (held under the auspices of ITU-T SG 16).
The JCT-VC meeting starting on the 22nd (held under the auspices of ITU-T SG 16).
Ad hoc group meetings on the weekend (23rd-24th).
Please note that
- Ad hoc group meetings during the weekend and evening sessions will take place in ITU headquarters.
- Both JCT-VC and VCEG will end their meetings on the 27th.
Logistic information
Badge pick-up and on-site registration: badges will be distributed at the Montbrillant building entrance of ITU (Rue de Varembé 2, about 100 metres from CICG) during the week days.
There will be no badge delivery over the weekend, but pre-registered delegates can enter the ITU building if they have pre-registered on the ITU registration page and provide their passport to the security officer. MPEG members who did not pre-register will not be able to enter the building. Entrance during the weekend and after-hours is only through the ITU Montbrillant building.
Access to the ITU building during the weekend and after-hours must be via the Montbrillant entrance (NOTE – This has changed via-a-vis previous meetings; when entrance was through the ITU Tower entrance).
Contact persons (from the host)
ITU-T Study Group 16 Secretariat
Tel: +41-22 730-5445
Fax: +41-22 730-5853
Email: tsbsg16@itu.int
Registration and meeting information
ITU will charge 150 CHF facilities fees. Payment is voluntary. However, participants are strongly encouraged to pay facilities fees to support the meeting. If done it is to be paid cash (payment by credit card is not possible).
MPEG members are required to register at both the online ISO meeting registration and the online ITU-T meeting registration, the latter by 9 March 2019:
Upon registration MPEG members will receive a badge that should be used at all times while at the meeting venue. Badges will be available for the delegates who have pre-registered and can be collected at the reception of the Montbrillant building, Mon-Fri 0830-1200, 1330-1700 hours.
Visa information
ITU can, at the official request of the administration or entity you represent, approach the competent Swiss authorities in order to facilitate delivery of the visa but only within the period mentioned of four weeks before the date of beginning of the meeting. Any such request must specify the name and functions, date of birth, number, dates of issue and expiry of passport of the individual(s) for whom the visa(s) is/are requested (see an example at: https://itu.int/en/ITU-T/info/Documents/Visa-support-letter_MODEL.pdf) and be accompanied by a copy of the notification of confirmation of registration approved for the ITU-T meeting in question, and must be sent to TSB by fax (+41 22 730 5853) or e-mail (tsbreg@itu.int) bearing the words "Visa request (MPEG meeting)".
Hotel information
Delegates attending meetings hosted by ITU may benefit from special terms in a number of hotels in Geneva. There you will find a self-explanatory procedure to be followed for the reservation of hotels. ITU is not responsible for reservation confirmations, cancelled or charged reservations or no-shows. Please contact the hotel directly for all reservation matters, including for any changes to be made. A hotel confirmation form is available for download (Word and PDF).
How to reach ITU and CICG
For all relevant information regarding ITU and Geneva, please see the delegate's corner in the ITU web site.
There is a single airport in Geneva, which serves for both domestic and international flights and is close to ITU and Geneva downtown.
Public transport in urban Geneva is quite good, so renting a car for those staying downtown may not be necessary. Hotels normally offer bus passes valid for the period of stay (without additional cost to their guests).
Weather
The temperature in March normally ranges from 2 to 10 ºC.
Electricity
The standard power supply is 220 Volts, 50Hz. Power plugs normally found are Swiss SEV 1011 and CEE 7/16. Adapters are found for sale in the ITU store, electronics stores, supermarkets and at the airport.
Emergencies
Police: 117
Medical Emergencies: 144
Business Hours
Most government offices are open 0830–1200 and 1330–1700 hours from Monday to Friday. Most stores are usually open from 0800 to 1845 hours. Saturdays, from 0800 to 1700 hours. General commerce is closed on Sundays. Shops at the airport are open until 2000 hours, inclusive on weekends and holidays. Convenience stores open all days, hours vary.
Automated Teller Machines (ATM)
Travelers who carry internationally recognized debit and credit cards (such as VISA and MasterCard) can get a cash advance in Geneva at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) installed at banks, airports, major hotels, department stores, subway stations and tourist attractions. The ATM machine closest to ITU is located at the UBS branch on the corner of Giuseppe Motta avenue and Chemin Louis-Dunant.
Computer Networking at ITU
Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a/g/n) facilities are available for use by delegates in the ITU conference rooms with three different SSIDs that share the same password (itu@GVA1211): ITUwifi (5GHz devices only), ITUwifi-IPv4v6 and ITUwifi-legacy (2GHz band only). Detailed information is available on the ITU-T website (https://itu.int/ITU-T/edh/faqs-support.html).
