MPEG news: a report from the 110th meeting, Strasbourg, France

This blog post is also available at SIGMM records.

The 110th MPEG meeting was held at the Strasbourg Convention and Conference Centre featuring the following highlights:

• The future of video coding standardization
• Workshop on media synchronization
• Standards at FDIS: Green Metadata and CDVS
• What's happening in MPEG-DASH?

Additional details about MPEG's 110th meeting can be also found here including the official press release and all publicly available documents.

The Future of Video Coding Standardization

MPEG110 hosted a panel discussion about the future of video coding standardization. The panel was organized jointly by MPEG and ITU-T SG 16's VCEG featuring Roger Bolton (Ericsson), Harald Alvestrand (Google), Zhong Luo (Huawei), Anne Aaron (Netflix), Stéphane Pateux (Orange), Paul Torres (Qualcomm), and JeongHoon Park (Samsung).

As expected, "maximizing compression efficiency remains a fundamental need" and as usual, MPEG will study "future application requirements, and the availability of technology developments to fulfill these requirements". Therefore, two Ad-hoc Groups (AhGs) have been established which are open to the public:

• AHG on Future Video Coding Technology [email][subscription]
• AHG on industry needs for Future Video Coding [email][subscription]

The presentations of the brainstorming session on the future of video coding standardization can be found here.

Workshop on Media Synchronization

MPEG101 also hosted a workshop on media synchronization for hybrid delivery (broadband-broadcast) featuring six presentations "to better understand the current state-of-the-art for media synchronization and identify further needs of the industry".

• An overview of MPEG systems technologies providing advanced media synchronization, Youngkwon Lim, Samsung
• Hybrid Broadcast - Overview of DVB TM-Companion Screens and Streams specification, Oskar van Deventer, TNO
• Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband distribution for new video services :  a use cases perspective, Raoul Monnier, Thomson Video Networks
• HEVC and Layered HEVC for UHD deployments, Ye Kui Wang, Qualcomm
• A fingerprinting-based audio synchronization technology, Masayuki Nishiguchi, Sony Corporation
• Media Orchestration from Capture to Consumption, Rob Koenen, TNO

The presentation material is available here. Additionally, MPEG established an AhG on timeline alignment (that's how the project is internally called) to study use cases and solicit contributions on gap analysis and also technical contributions [email][subscription].

Standards at FDIS: Green Metadata and CDVS

My first report on MPEG Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS) dates back to July 2011 which provides details about the call for proposals. Now, finally, the FDIS has been approved during the 110th MPEG meeting. CDVS defines a compact image description that facilitates the comparison and search of pictures that include similar content, e.g. when showing the same objects in different scenes from different viewpoints. The compression of key point descriptors not only increases compactness, but also significantly speeds up, when compared to a raw representation of the same underlying features, the search and classification of images within large image databases. Application of CDVS for real-time object identification, e.g. in computer vision and other applications, is envisaged as well.

Another standard reached FDIS status entitled Green Metadata (first reported in August 2012). This standard specifies the format of metadata that can be used to reduce energy consumption from the encoding, decoding, and presentation of media content, while simultaneously controlling or avoiding degradation in the Quality of Experience (QoE). Moreover, the metadata specified in this standard can facilitate a trade-off between energy consumption and QoE. MPEG is also working on amendments to the ubiquitous MPEG-2 TS ISO/IEC 13818-1 and ISOBMFF ISO/IEC 14496-12 so that green metadata can be delivered by these formats.

What's happening in MPEG-DASH?

MPEG-DASH is in a kind of maintenance mode but still receiving new proposals in the area of SAND parameters and some core experiments are going on. Also, the DASH-IF is working towards new interoperability points and test vectors in preparation of actual deployments. When speaking about deployments, they are happening, e.g., a 40h live stream right before Christmas (by bitmovin, a top-100 company that matters most in online video). Additionally, VideoNext was co-located with CoNEXT'14 targeting scientific presentations about the design, quality and deployment of adaptive video streaming. Webex recordings of the talks are available here. In terms of standardization, MPEG-DASH is progressing towards the 2nd amendment including spatial relationship description (SRD), generalized URL parameters and other extensions. In particular, SRD will enable new use cases which can be only addressed using MPEG-DASH and the FDIS is scheduled for the next meeting which will be in Geneva, Feb 16-20, 2015. I'll report on this within my next blog post, stay tuned..

MPEG news: a report from the 108th meeting, Valencia, Spain

This blog post is also available at bitmovin tech blog and SIGMM records.

The 108th MPEG meeting was held at the Palacio de Congresos de Valencia in Spain featuring the following highlights (no worries about the acronyms, this is on purpose and they will be further explained below):

• Requirements: PSAF, SCC, CDVA
• Systems: M2TS, MPAF, Green Metadata
• Video: CDVS, WVC, VCB
• JCT-VC: SHVC, SCC
• JCT-3D: MV/3D-HEVC, 3D-AVC
• Audio: 3D audio 

Opening Plenary of the 108th MPEG meeting in Valencia, Spain.

The official MPEG press release can be downloaded from the MPEG Web site. Some of the above highlighted topics will be detailed in the following and, of course, there’s an update on DASH-related matters at the end.

As indicated above, MPEG is full of (new) acronyms and in order to become familiar with those, I’ve put them deliberately in the overview but I will explain them further below.

PSAF – Publish/Subscribe Application Format

Publish/subscribe corresponds to a new network paradigm related to content-centric networking (or information-centric networking) where the content is addressed by its name rather than location. An application format within MPEG typically defines a combination of existing MPEG tools jointly addressing the needs for a given application domain, in this case, the publish/subscribe paradigm. The current requirements and a preliminary working draft are publicly available.

SCC – Screen Content Coding

I’ve introduced this topic in my previous report and this meeting the responses to the CfP have been evaluated. In total, seven responses have been received which meet all requirements and, thus, the actual standardization work is transferred to JCT-VC. Interestingly, the results of the CfP are publicly available. Within JCT-VC, a first test model has been defined and core experiments have been established. I will report more on this as an output of the next meetings…

CDVA – Compact Descriptors for Video Analysis

This project has been renamed from compact descriptors for video search to compact descriptors for video analysis and comprises a publicly available vision statement. That is, interested parties are welcome to join this new activity within MPEG.

M2TS – MPEG-2 Transport Stream

At this meeting, various extensions to M2TS have been defined such as transport of multi-view video coding depth information and extensions to HEVC, delivery of timeline for external data as well as carriage of layered HEVC, green metadata, and 3D audio. Hence, M2TS is still very active and multiple amendments are developed in parallel.

MPAF – Multimedia Preservation Application Format

The committee draft for MPAF has been approved and, in this context, MPEG-7 is extended with additional description schemes.

Green Metadata

Well, this standard does not have its own acronym; it’s simply referred to as MPEG-GREEN. The draft international standard has been approved and national bodies will vote on it at the JTC 1 level. It basically defines metadata to allow clients operating in an energy-efficient way. It comes along with amendments to M2TS and ISOBMFF that enable the carriage and storage of this metadata.

CDVS – Compact Descriptors for Visual Search

CDVS is at DIS stage and provide improvements on global descriptors as well as non-normative improvements of key-point detection and matching in terms of speedup and memory consumption. As all standards at DIS stage, national bodies will vote on it at the JTC 1 level. 

What’s new in the video/audio-coding domain?

• WVC – Web Video Coding: This project reached final draft international standard with the goal to provide a video-coding standard for Web applications. It basically defines a profile of the MPEG-AVC standard including those tools not encumbered by patents.
• VCB – Video Coding for Browsers: The committee draft for part 31 of MPEG-4 defines video coding for browsers and basically defines VP8 as an international standard. This is explains also the difference to WVC.
• SHVC – Scalable HEVC extensions: As for SVC, SHVC will be defined as an amendment to HEVC providing the same functionality as SVC, scalable video coding functionality.
• MV/3D-HEVC, 3D-AVC: These are multi-view and 3D extensions for the HEVC and AVC standards respectively.
• 3D Audio: Also, no acronym for this standard although I would prefer 3DA. However, CD has been approved at this meeting and the plan is to have DIS at the next meeting. At the same time, the carriage and storage of 3DA is being defined in M2TS and ISOBMFF respectively. 

Finally, what’s new in the media transport area, specifically DASH and MMT?

As interested readers know from my previous reports, DASH 2nd edition has been approved has been approved some time ago. In the meantime, a first amendment to the 2nd edition is at draft amendment state including additional profiles (mainly adding xlink support) and time synchronization. A second amendment goes to the first ballot stage referred to as proposed draft amendment and defines spatial relationship description, generalized URL parameters, and other extensions. Eventually, these two amendments will be integrated in the 2nd edition which will become the MPEG-DASH 3rd edition. Also a corrigenda on the 2nd edition is currently under ballot and new contributions are still coming in, i.e., there is still a lot of interest in DASH. For your information – there will be two DASH-related sessions at Streaming Forum 2014.

On the other hand, MMT’s amendment 1 is currently under ballot and amendment 2 defines header compression and cross-layer interface. The latter has been progressed to a study document which will be further discussed at the next meeting. Interestingly, there will be a MMT developer’s day at the 109th MPEG meeting as in Japan, 4K/8K UHDTV services will be launched based on MMT specifications and in Korea and China, implementation of MMT is now under way. The developer’s day will be on July 5th (Saturday), 2014, 10:00 – 17:00 at the Sapporo Convention Center. Therefore, if you don’t know anything about MMT, the developer’s day is certainly a place to be.

Contact:

Dr. Christian Timmerer
CIO bitmovin GmbH | christian.timmerer@bitmovin.net
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt | christian.timmerer@aau.at

What else? That is, some publicly available MPEG output documents… (Dates indicate availability and end of editing period, if applicable, using the following format YY/MM/DD):

• Text of ISO/IEC 13818-1:2013 PDAM 7 Carriage of Layered HEVC (14/05/02) 
• WD of ISO/IEC 13818-1:2013 AMD Carriage of Green Metadata (14/04/04) 
• WD of ISO/IEC 13818-1:2013 AMD Carriage of 3D Audio (14/04/04) 
• WD of ISO/IEC 13818-1:2013 AMD Carriage of additional audio profiles & levels (14/04/04) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 14496-12:2012 PDAM 4 Enhanced audio support (14/04/04) 
• TuC on sample variants, signatures and other improvements for the ISOBMFF (14/04/04) 
• Text of ISO/IEC CD 14496-22 3rd edition (14/04/04) 
• Text of ISO/IEC CD 14496-31 Video Coding for Browsers (14/04/11) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 15938-5:2005 PDAM 5 Multiple text encodings, extended classification metadata (14/04/04) 
• WD 2 of ISO/IEC 15938-6:201X (2nd edition) (14/05/09) 
• Text of ISO/IEC DIS 15938-13 Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (14/04/18) 
• Test Model 10: Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (14/05/02) 
• WD of ARAF 2nd Edition (14/04/18) 
• Use cases for ARAF 2nd Edition (14/04/18) 
• WD 5.0 MAR Reference Model (14/04/18) 
• Logistic information for the 5th JAhG MAR meeting (14/04/04) 
• Text of ISO/IEC CD 23000-15 Multimedia Preservation Application Format (14/04/18) 
• WD of Implementation Guideline of MP-AF (14/04/04) 
• Requirements for Publish/Subscribe Application Format (PSAF) (14/04/04) 
• Preliminary WD of Publish/Subscribe Application Format (14/04/04) 
• WD2 of ISO/IEC 23001-4:201X/Amd.1 Parser Instantiation from BSD (14/04/11) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 23001-8:2013/DCOR1 (14/04/18) 
• Text of ISO/IEC DIS 23001-11 Green Metadata (14/04/25) 
• Study Text of ISO/IEC 23002-4:201x/DAM2 FU and FN descriptions for HEVC (14/04/04) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 23003-4 CD, Dynamic Range Control (14/04/11) 
• MMT Developers’ Day in 109th MPEG meeting (14/04/04) 
• Results of CfP on Screen Content Coding Tools for HEVC (14/04/30) 
• Study Text of ISO/IEC 23008-2:2013/DAM3 HEVC Scalable Extensions (14/06/06) 
• HEVC RExt Test Model 7 (14/06/06) 
• Scalable HEVC (SHVC) Test Model 6 (SHM 6) (14/06/06) 
• Report on HEVC compression performance verification testing (14/04/25) 
• HEVC Screen Content Coding Test Model 1 (SCM 1) (14/04/25) 
• Study Text of ISO/IEC 23008-2:2013/PDAM4 3D Video Extensions (14/05/15) 
• Test Model 8 of 3D-HEVC and MV-HEVC (14/05/15) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 23008-3/CD, 3D audio (14/04/11) 
• Listening Test Logistics for 3D Audio Phase 2 (14/04/04) 
• Active Downmix Control (14/04/04) 
• Text of ISO/IEC PDTR 23008-13 Implementation Guidelines for MPEG Media Transport (14/05/02) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 23009-1 2nd edition DAM 1 Extended Profiles and availability time synchronization (14/04/18) 
• Text of ISO/IEC 23009-1 2nd edition PDAM 2 Spatial Relationship Description, Generalized URL parameters and other extensions (14/04/18) 
• Text of ISO/IEC PDTR 23009-3 2nd edition DASH Implementation Guidelines (14/04/18) 
• MPEG vision for Compact Descriptors for Video Analysis (CDVA) (14/04/04) 
• Plan of FTV Seminar at 109th MPEG Meeting (14/04/04) 
• Draft Requirements and Explorations for HDR /WCG Content Distribution and Storage (14/04/04) 
• Working Draft 2 of Internet Video Coding (IVC) (14/04/18) 
• Internet Video Coding Test Model (ITM) v 9.0 (14/04/18) 
• Uniform Timeline Alignment (14/04/18) 
• Plan of Seminar on Hybrid Delivery at the 110th MPEG Meeting (14/04/04) 
• WD 2 of MPEG User Description (14/04/04)

MPEG news: a report from the 106th meeting, Geneva, Switzerland

This blog post is also available at bitmovin tech blog and SIGMM records.

November, 2013, Geneva, Switzerland. Here comes a news report from the 106th MPEG in Geneva, Switzerland which was actually during the Austrian national day but Austrian Airlines had a nice present (see picture) for their guests.

The official press release can be found here.

In this meeting, ISO/IEC 23008-1 (i.e., MPEG-H Part 1) MPEG Media Transport (MMT) reached Final Draft International Standard (FDIS). Looking back when this project was started with the aim to supersede the widely adopted MPEG-2 Transport Stream (M2TS) — which receives the Technology & Engineering Emmy®Award in Jan’14 — and what we have now, the following features are supported within MMT:

• Self-contained multiplexing structure
• Strict timing model
• Reference buffer model
• Flexible splicing of content
• Name based access of data
• AL-FEC (application layer forward error correction)
• Multiple Qualities of Service within one packet flow

Interestingly, MMT supports the carriage of MPEG-DASH segments and MPD for uni-directional environments such as broadcasting.

MPEG-H now comprises three major technologies, part 1 is about transport (MMT; at FDIS stage), part 2 deals with video coding (HEVC; at FDIS stage), and part 3 will be about audio coding, specifically 3D audio coding (but it’s still in its infancy for which technical responses have been evaluated only recently). Other parts of MPEG-H are currently related to these three parts.

In terms of research, it is important to determine the efficiency, overhead, and — in general — the use cases enabled by MMT. From a business point of view, it will be interesting to see whether MMT will actually supersede M2TS and how it will evolve compared or in relation to DASH.

On another topic, MPEG-7 visual reached an important milestone at this meeting. The Committee Draft (CD) for Part 13 (ISO/IEC 15938-13) has been approved and is entitled Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS). This image description enables comparing and finding pictures that include similar content, e.g., when showing the same object from different viewpoints. CDVS mainly deals with images but MPEG also started work for compact descriptors for video search.

The CDVS standard truly helps to reduce the semantic gap. However, research in this domain is already well developed and it is unclear whether the research community will adopt CDVS, specifically because the interest in MPEG-7 descriptors has decreased lately. On the other hand, such a standard will enable interoperability among vendors and services (e.g., Google Goggles) reducing the number of proprietary formats and, hopefully, APIs. However, the most important question is whether CDVS will be adopted by the industry (and research).

Finally, what about MPEG-DASH?

The 2nd edition of part 1 (MPD and segment formats) and the 1st edition of part 2 (conformance and reference software) have been finalized at the 105th MPEG meeting (FDIS). Additionally, we had a public/open workshop at that meeting which was about session management and control for DASH. This and other new topics are further developed within so-called core experiments for which I’d like to give a brief overview:

• Server and Network assisted DASH Operation (SAND) which is the immediate result of the workshop at the 105th MPEG meeting and introduces a DASH-Aware Media Element (DANE) as depicted in the Figure below. Parameters from this element — as well as others — may support the DASH client within its operations, i.e., downloading the “best” segments for its context. SAND parameters are typically coming from the network itself whereas Parameters for enhancing delivery by DANE (PED) are coming from the content author.

• Spatial Relationship Description is about delivering (tiled) ultra-high-resolution content towards heterogeneous clients while at the same time providing interactivity (e.g., zooming). Thus, not only the temporal but also spatial relationship of representations needs to be described.

Other CEs are related to signaling intended source and display characteristics, controlling the DASH client behavior, and DASH client authentication and content access authorization.

The outcome of these CEs is potentially interesting for future amendments. One CE closed at this meeting which was about including quality information within DASH, e.g., as part of an additional track within ISOBMFF and an additional representation within the MPD. Clients may access this quality information in advance to assist the adaptation logic in order to make informed decisions about which segment to download next.

Interested people may join the MPEG-DASH Ad-hoc Group (AhG; http://lists.uni-klu.ac.at/mailman/listinfo/dash) where these topics (and others) are discussed.

Finally, additional information/outcome from the last meeting is accessible via http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/meetings/106 including documents publicly available (some may have an editing period).

Contact:
Dr. Christian Timmerer,
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt | christian.timmerer@aau.at
bitmovin GmbH | christian.timmerer@bitmovin.net

MPEG news: a report from the 98th meeting, Geneva, Switzerland

#MPEG98 report: DASH=IS ✔ CDVS=CfP eval ✔ {MMT, HEVC, 3DAudio}=MPEG-H ✔ IVC={IVC, WebVC} ✔ 3DVC=CfP eval ✔

... MPEG news from its 98th meeting in Geneva, Switzerland with less than 140 characters and a lot of acronyms. The official press release is, as usual, here. As you can see from the press release, MPEG produced significant results, namely:

• MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) ratified
• 3D Video Coding: Evaluation of responses to Call for Proposals
• MPEG royalty free video coding: Internet Video Coding (IVC) + Web Video Coding (WebVC)
• High Efficiency Coding and Media Delivery in Heterogeneous Environments: MPEG-H comprising MMT, HEVC, 3DAC
• Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS): Evaluation of responses to the Call for Proposals
• Call for requirements: Multimedia Preservation Description Information (MPDI)
• MPEG Augmented Reality (AR)

As you can see, a long list of achievements within a single meeting but let's dig inside. For each topic I've also tried to provide some research issues which I think are worth to investigate both inside and outside MPEG. 

MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH): DASH=IS ✔

As the official press release states, the MPEG ratifies its draft standard for DASH and it comes better, the standard should become publicly available which I expect to happen somewhat early next year, approx. March 2012, or maybe earlier. I say "should" because there is no guarantee that this will actually happen but signs are good. In the meantime, feel free using our software to play around and we expect to update it to the latest version of the standard as soon as possible. Finally, IEEE Computer Society Computing Now has put together a theme on Video for the Universal Web featuring DASH.

Research issues: performance, bandwidth estimation, request scheduling (aka adaptation logic), and Quality of Service/Experience.

3D Video Coding: 3DVC=CfP eval ✔

MPEG evaluated more than 20 proposals submitted as a response to the call issued back in April 2011. The evaluation of the proposal comprised subjective quality assessments conducted by 13 highly qualified test laboratories distributed around the world and coordinated by the COST Action IC1003 QUALINET. The report of the subjective test results from the call for proposals on 3D video coding will be available by end of this week. MPEG documented the standardization tracks considered in 3DVC (i.e., compatible with MVC, AVC base-view, HEVC, ...) and agreed on a common software based on the best-performing proposals.

Research issues: encoding efficiency of 3D depth maps and compatibility for the various target formats (AVC, MVC, HEVC) as well as depth map estimation at the client side.

MPEG royalty free video coding: IVC vs. WebVC

In addition to the evaluation of the responses to the call for 3DVC, MPEG also evaluated the responses to the Internet Video Coding call. Based on the responses, MPEG decided to follow up with two approaches namely Internet Video Coding (IVC) and Web Video Coding (WebVC). The former - IVC - is based on MPEG-1 technology which is assumed to be royalty-free. However, it requires some performance boosts in order to make it ready for the Internet. MPEG's approach is a common platform called Internet video coding Test Model (ITM) which serves as the basis for further improvements. The latter - WebVC - is based on the AVC constrained baseline profile which performance is well-known and satisfactory but, unfortunately, it is not clear which patents of the AVC patent pool apply to this profile. Hence, a working draft (WD) of WebVC will be provided (also publicly available) in order to get patent statements from companies. The WD will be publicly available by December 19th.

Further information:

• Royalty-Free MPEG Proposals Announced
• MPEG Plus or Patent Pool Lite? MPEG Mulls Royalty-Free Proposals
• Half of MPEG-2 Patents Expire in 2012

Research issues: coding efficiency with using only royalty free coding tools whereby the optimization is first towards royalties and then efficiency.

MPEG-H

A new star is born which is called MPEG-H referred to as "High Efficiency Coding and Media Delivery in Heterogeneous Environments" comprising three parts: Pt. 1 MMT, Pt. 2 HEVC, Pt. 3 3D Audio. There's a document called context and objective of MPEG-H but I can't find out whether it's public (I come back later on this).

Part 1: MMT (MPEG Media Transport) is progressing (slowly) but a next step should be definitely to check the relationship of MMT and DASH for which an Ad-hoc Group has been established (N12395), subscribe here, if interested.
Research issues: very general at the moment, what is the best delivery method (incl. formats) for future multimedia applications? Answer: It depends, ... ;-)

Part 2: HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) made significant progress at the last meeting, in particular: only one entropy coder (note: AVC has two, CABAC and CAVLC which are supported in different profiles), 8 bit decoding (could be also 10 bit, probably done in some profiles), specific integer transform, stabilized and more complete high-level syntax and HRD description (i.e., reference picture buffering, tiles, slices, and wavefronts enabling parallel decoding process). Finally, a prototype has been demonstrated decoding HEVC in software on an iPad 2 at WVGA resolution and the 10min Big Buck Bunny sequence at SD resolution with avg. 800 kbit/s which clearly outperformed the corresponding AVC versions.
Research issues: well, coding efficiency, what else? The ultimative goal to have a performance gain of more than 50% compared to the predecessor which is AVC.

Part 3: 3D Audio Coding (3DAC) is in its early stages but there will be an event during San Jose meeting which will be announced here. As of now, use cases are provided (home theatre, personal TV, smartphone TV, multichannel TV) as well as candidate requirements and evaluation methods. One important aspect seems to be user experience for highly immersive audio (i.e., 22.2, 10.2, 5.1) including bitstream adaptation for low-bandwidth and low-complexity.
Research issues: sorry, I'm not really an audio guy but I assume it's coding efficiency, specifically for 22.2 channels ;-)

Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS)

For CDVS, responses to the call for proposals (from 10 companies/institutions) have been evaluated and a test model has been established based on the best performing proposals. The next steps include the improvement of the test model towards for inclusion in the MPEG-7 standard.
Research issues: descriptor efficiency for the intended application as well as precision on the information retrieval results.

Multimedia Preservation Description Information (MPDI)

The aim of this new work item is to provide "standard technology helping users to preserve digital multimedia that is used in many different domains, including cultural heritage, scientific research, engineering, education and training, entertainment, and fine arts for long-term across system, organizational, administrative and generational boundaries". It comes along with two public documents, the current requirements and a call for requirements which are due at the 100th MPEG meeting in April 2002.
Research issues: What and how to preserve digital multimedia information?

Augmented Reality (AR)

MPEG's newest project is on Augmented Reality (AR), starting with an application format for which a working draft exists. Furthermore, draft requirements and use cases are available. These three documents will be available on Dec 31st.
Research issues: N/A

Finally, I hope now you can better understand what I've put at the beginning with all these acronyms ...

#MPEG98 report: DASH=IS ✔ CDVS=CfP eval ✔ {MMT, HEVC, 3DAudio}=MPEG-H ✔ IVC={IVC, WebVC} ✔ 3DVC=CfP eval ✔

MPEG news: a report from the 97th meeting, Torino, Italy

The 97th MPEG meeting in Torino brought a few interesting news which I'd like to report here briefly. Of course, as usual, there is the official press release, however, I'd like to report on some interesting topics as follows:

• MPEG Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC) reached FDIS status
• Call for Proposals: Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS)
• Call for Proposals: Internet Video Coding (IVC)
• DIS on MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH)

MPEG Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC) reached FDIS status

ISO/IEC 23003-3 aka Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC) reached FDIS status and soon will be an International Standard. The FDIS itself won't be publicly available but the Unified Speech and Audio Coding Verification Test Report in September 2011 (most likely here). 

Call for Proposals: Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS)

I reported previously about that and here comes the final CfP including the evaluation framework.

MPEG is planning standardizing technologies that will enable efficient and interoperable design of visual search applications. In particular we are seeking technologies for visual content matching in images or video. Visual content matching includes matching of views of objects, landmarks, and printed documents that is robust to partial occlusions as well as changes in vantage point, camera parameters, and lighting conditions.

There are a number of component technologies that are useful for visual search, including format of visual descriptors, descriptor extraction process, as well as indexing, and matching algorithms. As a minimum, the format of descriptors as well as parts of their extraction process should be defined to ensure interoperability.

It is envisioned that a standard for compact descriptors will:

• ensure interoperability of visual search applications and databases, 
• enable high level of performance of implementations conformant to the standard,
• simplify design of descriptor extraction and matching for visual search applications, 
• enable hardware support for descriptor extraction and matching in mobile devices,
• reduce load on wireless networks carrying visual search-related information.

It is envisioned that such standard will provide a complementary tool to the suite of existing MPEG standards, such as MPEG-7 Visual Descriptors. To build full visual search application this standard may be used jointly with other existing standards, such as MPEG Query Format, HTTP, XML, JPEG, JPSec, and JPSearch.

The Call for Proposals and the Evaluation Framework is publicly available. From a research perspective, it would be interesting to see how technologies submitted as an answer to the CfP compete with existing approaches and applications/services.

In this context, it is probably worth looking at IEEE Multimedia Jul.-Sep. 2011 issue which is dedicated to visual content: identification and search including an overview about this new MPEG standard.

Call for Proposals: Internet Video Coding (IVC)

I reported previously about that and the final CfP for Internet Video Coding Technologies is available here. The requirements reveal some interesting issues the call is about:

• Real-time communications, video chat, video conferencing,
• Mobile streaming, broadcast and communications,
• Mobile devices and Internet connected embedded devices 
• Internet broadcast streaming, downloads
• Content sharing.

Requirements fall into the following major categories:

• IPR requirements
• Technical requirements
• Implementation complexity requirements 

Clearly, this work item has an optimization towards IPR but others are not excluded. In particular,

It is anticipated that any patent declaration associated with the Baseline Profile of this standard will indicate that the patent owner is prepared to grant a free of charge license to an unrestricted number of applicants on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis and under other reasonable terms and conditions to make, use, and sell implementations of the Baseline Profile of this standard in accordance with the ITU-T/ITU-R/ISO/IEC Common Patent Policy. 

MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH)

For all DASH enthusiast, the latest - and probably almost final - version of DASH-related standards can be found here. Please note that DASH has been reorganized into MPEG-DASH referred to as ISO/IEC DIS 23009-1.2, Part 1: Media presentation description and segment formats. Additionally, you might be interested in the following draft:

• ISO/IEC 14496-12:2008/DAM 3, Part 12: ISO base media file format, AMENDMENT 3: DASH support and RTP reception hint track processing
• ISO/IEC FDIS 23001-7, Part 7: Common encryption format for ISO base media file format

All these DASH-related documents are publicly available here. In terms of implementation, the interested reader might check out the ITEC-DASH VLC-based implementation and GPAC (which provides basic support for DASH) respectively.

Further information you may find at the MPEG Web site, specifically under the hot news section and the press release. Working documents of any MPEG standard so far can be found here. If you want to join any of these activities, the list of Ad-hoc Groups (AhG) is available here (soon also here) including the information how to join their reflectors.