Audio for High Efficiency Video Coding

--Document available here.

At the 92nd meeting, April 2010, MPEG evaluated the Call for Proposals for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and launched this new work item. It is envisioned that HEVC will specify video coding for devices whose capabilities are beyond those of current HD displays. These might be Ultra-HD (UHD) devices, such as 4K x 2K displays. In such UHD displays, a much closer viewing distance is feasible and perhaps desirable. At such viewing distances there is both visual and audio envelopment. This could have significant impact on audio presentation such that much more accurate sound localization in terms of direction and distance is desirable. If there is only one viewer, it might be that aspects of the audio presentation might be individualized in some meaningful way.

This document describes application scenarios (i.e., home cinema, personal 3D video TV, multi-channel audio programs, real-time communication, mobile streaming, streaming/storage/download, 3D video or telepresence), possible requirements (i.e., on high quality, localization and envelopment, compression, flexible loudspeaker placement, downmix and rendering, complexity, interactivity), possible relevant technologies (ranging from MPEG-D Unified Speech and Audio Coding to MPEG-4 AAC-ELD and MPEG Surround among others), and, finally, some open issues (i.e., what subjective evaluation method is appropriate for this work?).