WG11 (MPEG) issues Final Draft International Standard of
MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding
The 130th WG 11 (MPEG) meeting was held online, 20-24 April 2020
WG11 (MPEG) issues Final Draft International Standard of MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding
At its 130th meeting, WG11 (MPEG) is proud to announce the completion of the new ISO/IEC 23094-1 standard, i.e., MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding (EVC), which has been promoted to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) status. There is a constant demand for more efficient video coding technologies, but coding efficiency is not the only factor determining the industry's choice of video coding technology for products and services. The standard offers improved compression efficiency compared to existing video coding standards and is based on the statements of all contributors to the standard who have committed to announce their license terms for the MPEG-5 EVC standard no later than two years after the FDIS publication date.
The MPEG-5 EVC defines two important profiles, including "Baseline profile" and "Main profile". The "Baseline profile" contains only technologies that are older than 20 years or otherwise freely available for use in the standard. In addition, the "Main profile" adds a small number of additional tools, each of which can be either cleanly disabled or switched to the corresponding baseline tool on an individual basis.
WG11 (MPEG) issues the Final Draft International Standards for
parts 1, 2, 4, and 5 of MPEG-G 2nd edition
WG 11 (MPEG) and ISO TC 276/WG 5 have addressed the emerging problem of managing the large quantities of genomic sequencing data by developing the ISO/IEC 23092 standard series also known as MPEG-G. The series provides the specification of a file and transport format (Part 1), compression technology (Part 2), metadata specifications, protection support, and standard APIs for the access of sequencing data in the native compressed format (Part 3).
In line with the traditional MPEG practice of continuous improvement of the quality and performance of its standards, at its 130th meeting, MPEG promoted to FDIS a new edition of Part 1 and 2 and to FDIS Part 4 “Reference Software” and Part 5 “Conformance”. Such components of the MPEG-G standard series provide important supports to those willing to implement the standard or interested to verify the correctness and interoperability of their own implementations.
Compared to the first edition, the second editions of ISO/IEC 23092-1 and ISO/IEC 23092-2, haves been improved by taking into accounts comments received from users.
The ISO/IEC 23092-4 (MPEG-G Reference Software) standard provides a normative implementation of the standard. In conjunction with the ISO/IEC 23092-5 (MPEG-G Conformance) standard, it provides a comprehensive specification and validation support for the development of conforming decoder implementations. Interoperability of applications relying on normative decoding processes is facilitated by a reference normative decoding process and a rich set of tests and corresponding golden references.
WG11 (MPEG) expands the Coverage of
ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF) Family of Standards
At the 130th WG11 (MPEG) meeting, three new amendments to the ISOBMFF family have reached their final milestone, i.e., Final Draft Amendment (FDAM): (1) Amendment 4 to ISO/IEC 14496-12 (ISO Base Media File Format ) allows the use of a more compact version of metadata for movie fragments; (2) Amendment 1 to ISO/IEC 14496-15 (Carriage of network abstraction layer (NAL) unit structured video in the ISO base media file format) adds support of HEVC slice segment data track and additional extractor types for HEVC such as track reference and track groups; and (3) Amendment 2 to ISO/IEC 23008-12 (Image File Format) adds support for more advanced features related to the storage of short image sequences such as burst and bracketing shots.
At the same time, new amendments have reached their first milestone, i.e., Committee Draft Amendment (CDAM): (1) Amendment 2 to ISO/IEC 14496-15 (Carriage of network abstraction layer (NAL) unit structured video in the ISO base media file format) extends its scope to newly developed video coding standards such as Essential Video Coding (EVC ) and Versatile Video Coding (VVC ); and (2) the first edition of ISO /IEC 23001-16 (Derived visual tracks in the ISO base media file format) allows a new type of visual track whose content can be dynamically generated at the time of presentation by applying some operations to the content in other tracks, such as crossfading over two tracks. They are expected to reach their final milestone in mid 2021.
Finally, the final text for the ISO/IEC 14496-12 6th edition Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) is now ready for the ballot after converting MP4RA to the Maintenance Agency. WG11 (MPEG) notes that Apple Inc. has been appointed as the Maintenance Agency and MPEG appreciates its valuable efforts for the many years while already acting as the official registration authority for the ISOBMFF family of standards, i.e., MP4RA (https://mp4ra.org/). It is expected to be published by ISO by the end of this year.
A New Standard for Large Scale Client-specific Streaming with DASH
Historically, in ISO/IEC 23009 (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP; DASH), every client has used the same manifest as it best serves the scalability of the service. However, there have been increasing requests from the industry to enable customized manifests for more personalized services. WG11 (MPEG) has studied a solution to this problem without sacrificing scalability, and it has reached the first milestone of its standardization at the 130th MPEG meeting.
ISO/IEC 23009-8 adds a mechanism to the Media Presentation Description (MPD) to refer to another document, called Session-based Description (SBD), which allows per-session information. The DASH client can use this information (i.e., variables and their values) provided in the SBD to derive the URLs for HTTP GET requests. This standard is expected to reach its final milestone in mid 2021.
Additional Important Activities
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 130th WG11 (MPEG) meeting was fully online, the first in MPEG’s 30+ years of history. Some 600 experts attending from 19 time zones worked in tens of meeting sessions supported by an online calendar and by collaborative tools that involved MPEG experts in both online and offline sessions. Although the productivity of the online meeting could not reach the level of regular face-to-face meetings, the results posted in the press release show that MPEG experts managed the challenge quite well. Additional important activities include (i) the carriage of visual volumetric video-based coding data, (ii) Network-Based Media Processing (NBMP) function templates, (iii) the conversion from MPEG-21 contracts to smart contracts, (iv) deep neural network based video coding, (v) Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC) reaching DIS stage, and (vi) a new level of the MPEG-4 Audio ALS Simple Profile for high-resolution audio among others.
How to contact WG 11 (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 WG 11 (MPEG), visit WG 11 (MPEG)’s home page at https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/. There you will find information publicly available from WG 11 (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 WG 11 (MPEG)’s standards freely available. Press releases from previous WG 11 (MPEG) meetings are also available.
Journalists that wish to receive WG 11 (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 WG 11 (MPEG) meetings are planned as follows:
No. 131, Online, 29 June – 03 July 2020
No. 132, Rennes, FR, 12 – 16 October 2020
No. 133, Cape Town, ZA, 11 – 15 January 2021
No. 134, Geneva, CH, 26 – 30 April 2021
For further information about WG 11 (MPEG), please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convenor of WG 11 (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 Alpbach meeting will not be held physically, but online
1Introduction
Bearing in mind the instructions received from the ISO Central Secretariat that no ISO meeting may be held physically until 2020/06/30, the 130th WG 11 meeting planned to be held in Alpbach, AT, on 20-24 April 2020, preceded by JVET, JCT-VC and AhG meeting (called “physical meeting” in the following) is cancelled and replaced by a fully online meeting (called “MPEG130 online” in the following).
Meeting dates:
- The JVET meeting starts on the 15th of April.
- The JCT-VC meeting starts on the 18th of April.
- Ad hoc group meetings may be held on the days preceding the 20th of April.
- MPEG starts on 2020/04/20T05:00UTC and the last session will starts on 2020/04/24T21:00 UTC.
Registration on the ISO website and the meeting organiser’s website is required to attend MPEG130 online.
To recover significant costs, currently considered irrecoverable, facilities fees of 275 € for attending MPEG130 online are applied. Attendance at MPEG130 online will not be denied to those who have not paid facility fees.
If those expenses (meeting rooms) will be refunded, all or in part, e.g. by order of the Austrian authorities, they will be refunded in an economic way to members.
Those who have paid the facility fees for the physical meeting will be reimbursed the amount paid subtracted the MPEG130 online facilities fees, if they agree to pay the online facility fees.
This meeting notice includes guidelines that are expected to lead to a successful holding of MPEG130 online.
Please note the acronyms below.
|
Acronyms: |
MDMS |
MPEG Document Management System |
wg11.sc29.org |
|
|
MMSS |
MPEG Meeting Support System (calendar) |
wg11.sc29.org |
2Suggested steps in preparation to MPEG130 online
- MDMS is open for MPEG130 document registration.
- AhGs accelerate work on their mandates by holding teleconferences in advance to MPEG130 to improve meeting efficiency.
- AhGs can plan to hold unplanned online meetings on days before, instead of or in addition to, the 18-19 April following our internal rule “Members of an AHG may be given shorter notice of meetings (including agenda) by the AHG chairman in writing. Such notice shall be given by the chairman not less than two weeks in advance of the proposed meeting. Should any member of the AHG object in writing, meetings shall be held according to a meeting notice distributed four months in advance and no less than three months, or according to the formally established meeting schedule for that AHG. The Convenor shall be consulted by the Chairman on any intention to convene an unplanned meeting.” (see https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/content/ad-hoc-groups)
- When registering a document for MPEG130, an abstract with as many details as possible should be added to help chairs define sessions and properly allocate contributions.
- Particularly at this meeting, late documents will only be considered if there is consensus and time to discuss them.
3General on MPEG130 online
- Online MPEG130 sessions will be password protected. The meeting password will be communicated to those who have registered.
- MPEG130 online, for a group as large and untrained as ours, is bound to be less efficient than a regular physical meeting.
- The management will set the goals of the meeting, which are likely not to include all the goals we could have set for a physical meeting. The goals will balance urgency, maturity and achievability of results.
- A full schedule will be developed in strict contact with BoG chairs. This will balance the need to achieve as many results as possible (i.e. parallel sessions) with giving the opportunity to as many members as possible to attend (i.e. sequential sections).
- MPEG130 online will be conducted in 3 time slots starting at 05:00, 13:00 and 21:00. The sessions inside will have durations less than 2 hours followed by a break.
- Zoom will be used consistently for all online sessions (all Chairs have Zoom accounts and most BoGs should have a Zoom account because all standard editors can have one).
- BoG participants may agree to hold informal BoG-related discussions (by email and other means). Any conclusion reached shall be documented in a registered document and subsequently confirmed by a scheduled BoG meeting (online) and then by the relevant subgroup.
- BoG schedules may change while the week progresses. If a change is needed, BoG chairs will determine the time zones of their intended participants, and suggest times for calls preferably in the said 05:00, 13:00 and 21:00 time slots, in consultation with the appropriate subgroup chair. Changes will be announced at least 22 hours in advance.
- Advisors should inform their colleagues of the difficulties of such a large online meeting and respond accordingly.
- Video shall not be used in all MPEG130 sessions.
- Duties/prerogatives of chairs:
- Enter data of their sessions in MMSS and update them every day
- Use online annotation tools in shared screen and whiteboard modes
- Agree with participants the queue management system (voice-only/Zoom-based)
- Enforce the queue
- Give the floor, typically in the order of requests
- Stop verbose comments after warning
- Mute participants whose unmuted microphones cause noise
- Stop a session after two hours continuous meeting (ISO regulation)
- An online session may only last 2h.
- Duties of participants
- Request the floor announcing their name (compulsory)
- Mute microphone if not speaking
- Monitor the zoom chat window.
4ICT support
- Chairs will register the meeting sessions of the week in MMSS with URLs and session name
- Christian is preparing a new system where
- Chairs enter sessions
- In not more than 2-hour slots
- With all the details, e.g. list of documents to be discussed.
- Chairs record results of document discussions (i.e. preliminary report of meeting sessions) using the facility at mpeg.expert
- Chairs share their screen to enable participants to see chairs’ activity.
- Chairs enter sessions
Thanks Christian, for this and the many other things you have done for MPEG!
5Table of activities
UT: UTC
CE: CEST
Column X:
- D indicates deadline
- S indicates that the action start at that time
|
Date |
UT |
CE |
Who |
X |
Action |
|
04/08 |
21 |
23 |
All |
D |
Register contributions with abstracts |
|
04/08 |
|
|
Chairs |
D |
Post draft schedules of plenaries with URLs and subgroup meeting goals |
|
04/08 |
21 |
23 |
JVET |
D |
Upload JVET contributions |
|
04/10 |
|
|
BoGChairs |
D |
Submit proposed schedules of their sessions to chairs |
|
04/15 |
21 |
23 |
All others |
D |
Upload their contributions |
|
04/17 |
|
|
Mgmt |
D |
Produce full MPEG meeting schedule (plenaries-subgroups-BoGs) with URLs and goals Enter said meeting schedule to MMSS |
|
04/18 |
05 |
07 |
AhGs |
S |
Hold meetings per their planned physical meetings if necessary |
|
04/19 |
05 |
07 |
AhGs |
S |
Do. |
|
04/19 |
16 |
18 |
Mgmt |
S |
Hold chairs meeting (2h) |
|
04/19 |
18 |
20 |
AhGChairs |
D |
Upload to MDMS presentations with detailed conclusions |
|
04/20 |
05 |
07 |
All |
S |
Hold plenary (2h)
|
|
04/20 |
07 |
09 |
Chairs |
S |
Decide on late registrations/submissions with SG members |
|
04/20 |
16 |
18 |
Advisors |
S |
Hold advisors meeting (1h) |
|
04/21 |
16 |
18 |
Mgmt |
S |
Hold chairs meeting (2h) |
|
04/21 |
20 |
22 |
Chairs |
D |
Upload their mid-week presentations to MDMS |
|
04/20 |
13 |
15 |
All |
S |
Hold plenary (1h)
|
|
04/23 |
16 |
18 |
Mgmt |
S |
Hold chairs meeting (2h) Add their conclusion to mission control of MDMS |
|
04/24 |
18 |
20 |
Members |
D |
Can access conclusion document in MDMS mission control |
|
04/24 |
18 |
20 |
Chairs |
D |
Upload liaisons to MMDS |
|
04/24 |
18 |
20 |
Chairs |
D |
Upload subgroup presentations to MDMS |
|
04/24 |
21 |
23 |
All |
S |
Hold plenary (2h)
|