What happened in multimedia communication in 2018?

In January 2018 I wrote a blog post entitled "What to care about in multimedia communication in 2018?" and I think it's worth looking back to see what actually happened with respect to next generation video coding formats and adaptive streaming techniques.

In April 2018, the responses to the call for proposals for the next standard in video compression have been evaluated and a first working draft and test model for the Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard have been approved. At this point already, some proposals demonstrated compression efficiency gains of typically 40% or more when compared to using HEVC. Currently, working draft 3 and test model 3 of VVC (VTM 3) are available and we may certainly expect compression efficiency gains well-beyond the targeted 50% for the final standard. An overview about VVC can be found here (by C. Feldmann) and here (by M. Wien). The licensing issues have been acknowledged and, thus, the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) has been established.

At the beginning of 2018, everyone was also very curious about AOMedia and AV1. Version 1 of the specification has been finally become available and in the meantime it is implemented/deployed on both content provisioning/encoding (e.g. Bitmovin) and content consumption/decoding (e.g., Chrome, Firefox). In this context, we also published a multi-codec DASH dataset comprising AVC, HEVC, VP9, and AV1 (VVC will be added at a later stage). In general, however, we are entering the era of multiple video codecs deployed in products and services whereby this trend is also confirmed by Bitmovin's latest video developer survey.

MPEG-DASH 3rd edition has been approved and is awaiting publication but I expect this to happen in 2019 though. An overview of the MPEG-DASH status is shown in the figure below.

In this context, the DASH-IF produced various vital assets such as interoperability guidelines (latest v4.3, content protection, ATSC 3.0, SAND), test vectors, conformance tools, and a reference client. For informative aspects of MPEG-DASH such as the bitrate adaptation schemes the interested reader is referred to our survey. This survey gives an overview about existing techniques (see figure below) and also outlines future research. It is available for free for everyone (open access).

Finally, I mentioned a couple of scientific events in 2018 including QoMEX, MMSys (NOSSDAV, PV), ICME, ICIP, PCS, and MIPR. I have attended all of the them (except PCS), each showing advances in their respective field. These events are probably worth to attend also in 2019 but I will certainly blog about this early next year. However, I'd like to hear your opinion of what happened in 2018 and what we may expect in 2019...

What to care about in multimedia communication in 2018?

In the past days/weeks you may have witness a high number of forecasts/predictions for 2018, like this one here. I'm not so good at predictions and we all learned these days to be careful about speculation. Thus, my focus here is on things to care about in 2018.

MPEG and VCEG are working towards a new video coding standard (naming, number scheme yet to be defined) and the call for proposals is out. Responses will be evaluated by the 122nd MPEG meeting in April 2018 (San Diego, CA, USA) and a new standard is expected to be available in late 2020. The main focus of the CfP is (i) 360-degree omnidirectional video, (ii) high-dynamic range (HDR), (iii) wide colour gamut (WCG), and (iv) conventional standard-dynamic-range camera content. The goal is -- simple, as usual -- compress digital video content, i.e., twice as much as you did before with the same video quality, e.g., as HEVC, or get higher quality with the same number of bits (or a combination thereof). Initial, preliminary results indicate this goal is feasible and everyone is looking forward to the MPEG meeting in April; certainly a place to be.

In addition to what MPEG/VCEG is doing, the Alliance for Open Media gained significant attention with its AV1 codec, first demos are available, and recently also Apple joined AOM. AV1 is not longer controlled by a single company, and, thus, it is becoming a real alternative in the video coding landscape, specifically for the streaming market. The nice thing, it's open source and royalty-free! In other words, one should not neglect AV1 and I think we will see many, hopefully good news in 2018.

On this topic, you might be interested in reading this and this.

What about DASH in 2018? We will see a 3rd edition of MPEG-DASH, the DASH-IF will further work on interoperability points, and I expect further convergence of DASH and HLS towards CMAF. However, I also expect minor changes for the main, common use cases utilizing the core technology of HTTP adaptive streaming. Changes, if any, will be transparent to most of us. On the other hand, immersive media and user engagement will become more and more important as more services are delivered over the top leading to more content becoming available to end users, thus, increasing competition among providers, vendors, etc. As a consequence, (a) content, (b) quality, and (c) costs will be important aspects, whereby (a+c) are "easy to sell" but (b) is still difficult to quantify (and "sell") with many open issues to solve in the (near) future.

Before drifting off to forecasts and predictions, I'd like to conclude with a list of scientific events in 2018 which are worthwhile to attend:

• QoMEX -- Int'l Conf. on Quality of Multimedia Experience -- will be hosted in Sardinia, Italy from May 29-31, which is THE conference to be for QoE of multimedia applications and services. Submission deadline is January 15/22, 2018.
• MMSys -- Multimedia Systems Conf. -- and specifically Packet Video, which will be on June 12 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Packet Video is THE adaptive streaming scientific event 2018. Submission deadline is March 1, 2018.
• Additionally, you might be interested in ICME (July 23-27, 2018, San Diego, USA; I'm part of a tutorial there;), ICIP (October 7-10, 2018, Athens, Greece; specifically in the context of video coding), and PCS (June 24-27, 2018, San Francisco, CA, USA; also in the context of video coding).
• The DASH-IF academic track hosts special events at MMSys (Excellence in DASH Award) and ICME (DASH Grand Challenge).
• MIPR -- 1st Int'l Conf. on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval -- will be in Miami, Florida, USA from April 10-12, 2018. It has a broad range of topics including networking for multimedia systems as well as systems and infrastructures.

MPEG news: a report from the 120th meeting, Macau, China

MPEG Meeting Plenary

The original blog post can be found at the Bitmovin Techblog and has been updated here to focus on and highlight research aspects. Additionally, this version of the blog post will be also posted at ACM SIGMM Records.

MPEG News Archive

The MPEG press release comprises the following topics:

• Point Cloud Compression – MPEG evaluates responses to call for proposal and kicks off its technical work 
• The omnidirectional media format (OMAF) has reached its final milestone 
• MPEG-G standards reach Committee Draft for compression and transport technologies of genomic data 
• Beyond HEVC – The MPEG & VCEG call to set the next standard in video compression 
• MPEG adds better support for mobile environment to MMT 
• New standard completed for Internet Video Coding 
• Evidence of new video transcoding technology using side streams 

Point Cloud Compression

At its 120th meeting, MPEG analysed the technologies submitted by nine industry leaders as responses to the Call for Proposals (CfP) for Point Cloud Compression (PCC). These technologies address the lossless or lossy coding of 3D point clouds with associated attributes such as colour and material properties. Point clouds are referred to as unordered sets of points in a 3D space and typically captured using various setups of multiple cameras, depth sensors, LiDAR scanners, etc., but can also be generated synthetically and are in use in several industries. They have recently emerged as representations of the real world enabling immersive forms of interaction, navigation, and communication. Point clouds are typically represented by extremely large amounts of data providing a significant barrier for mass market applications. Thus, MPEG has issued a Call for Proposal seeking technologies that allow reduction of point cloud data for its intended applications. After a formal objective and subjective evaluation campaign, MPEG selected three technologies as starting points for the test models for static, animated, and dynamically acquired point clouds. A key conclusion of the evaluation was that state-of-the-art point cloud compression can be significantly improved by leveraging decades of 2D video coding tools and combining 2D and 3D compression technologies. Such an approach provides synergies with existing hardware and software infrastructures for rapid deployment of new immersive experiences.

Although the initial selection of technologies for point cloud compression has been concluded at the 120th MPEG meeting, it could be also seen as a kick-off for its scientific evaluation and various further developments including the optimization thereof. It is expected that various scientific conference will focus on point cloud compression and may open calls for grand challenges like for example at IEEE ICME 2018.

Omnidirectional Media Format (OMAF)

The understanding of the virtual reality (VR) potential is growing but market fragmentation caused by the lack of interoperable formats for the storage and delivery of such content stifles VR’s market potential. MPEG’s recently started project referred to as Omnidirectional Media Format (OMAF) has reached Final Draft of International Standard (FDIS) at its 120th meeting. It includes

• equirectangular projection and cubemap projection as projection formats; 
• signalling of metadata required for interoperable rendering of 360-degree monoscopic and stereoscopic audio-visual data; and 
• provides a selection of audio-visual codecs for this application. 

It also includes technologies to arrange video pixel data in numerous ways to improve compression efficiency and reduce the size of video, a major bottleneck for VR applications and services, The standard also includes technologies for the delivery of OMAF content with MPEG-DASH and MMT.

MPEG has defined a format comprising a minimal set of tools to enable interoperability among implementers of the standard. Various aspects are deliberately excluded from the normative parts to foster innovation leading to novel products and services. This enables us -- researcher and practitioners -- to experiment with these new formats in various ways and focus on informative aspects where typically competition can be found. For example, efficient means for encoding and packaging of omnidirectional/360-degree media content and its adaptive streaming including support for (ultra-)low latency will become a big issue in the near future.

MPEG-G: Compression and Transport Technologies of Genomic Data

The availability of high throughput DNA sequencing technologies opens new perspectives in the treatment of several diseases making possible the introduction of new global approaches in public health known as “precision medicine”. While routine DNA sequencing in the doctor’s office is still not current practice, medical centers have begun to use sequencing to identify cancer and other diseases and to find effective treatments. As DNA sequencing technologies produce extremely large amounts of data and related information, the ICT costs of storage, transmission, and processing are also very high. The MPEG-G standard addresses and solves the problem of efficient and economical handling of genomic data by providing new

• compression technologies (ISO/IEC 23092-2) and 
• transport technologies (ISO/IEC 23092-1), 

which reached Committee Draft level at its 120th meeting.

Additionally, the Committee Drafts for

• metadata and APIs (ISO/IEC 23092-3) and 
• reference software (ISO/IEC 23092-4) 

are scheduled for the next MPEG meeting and the goal is to publish Draft International Standards (DIS) at the end of 2018.

This new type of (media) content, which requires compression and transport technologies, is emerging within the multimedia community at large and, thus, input is welcome.

Beyond HEVC – The MPEG & VCEG Call to set the Next Standard in Video Compression

The 120th MPEG meeting marked the first major step toward the next generation of video coding standard in the form of a joint Call for Proposals (CfP) with ITU-T SG16’s VCEG. After two years of collaborative informal exploration studies and a gathering of evidence that successfully concluded at the 118th MPEG meeting, MPEG and ITU-T SG16 agreed to issue the CfP for future video coding technology with compression capabilities that significantly exceed those of the HEVC standard and its current extensions. They also formalized an agreement on formation of a joint collaborative team called the “Joint Video Experts Team” (JVET) to work on development of the new planned standard, pending the outcome of the CfP that will be evaluated at the 122nd MPEG meeting in April 2018. To evaluate the proposed compression technologies, formal subjective tests will be performed using video material submitted by proponents in February 2018. The CfP includes the testing of technology for 360° omnidirectional video coding and the coding of content with high-dynamic range and wide colour gamut in addition to conventional standard-dynamic-range camera content. Anticipating a strong response to the call, a “test model” draft design is expected be selected in 2018, with development of a potential new standard in late 2020.

The major goal of a new video coding standard is to be better than its successor (HEVC). Typically this "better" is quantified by 50% which means, that it should be possible encode the video at the same quality with half of the bitrate or a significantly higher quality with the same bitrate including. However, at this time the “Joint Video Experts Team” (JVET) from MPEG and ITU-T SG16 faces competition from the Alliance for Open Media, which is working on AV1. In any case, we are looking forward to an exciting time frame from now until this new codec is ratified and how it will perform compared to AV1. Multimedia systems and applications will also benefit from new codecs which will gain traction as soon as first implementations of this new codec becomes available (note that AV1 is available as open source already and continuously further developed).

MPEG adds Better Support for Mobile Environment to MPEG Media Transport (MMT)

MPEG has approved the Final Draft Amendment (FDAM) to MPEG Media Transport (MMT; ISO/IEC 23008-1:2017), which is referred to as “MMT enhancements for mobile environments”. In order to reflect industry needs on MMT, which has been well adopted by broadcast standards such as ATSC 3.0 and Super Hi-Vision, it addresses several important issues on the efficient use of MMT in mobile environments. For example, it adds distributed resource identification message to facilitate multipath delivery and transition request message to change the delivery path of an active session. This amendment also introduces the concept of a MMT-aware network entity (MANE), which might be placed between the original server and the client, and provides a detailed description about how to use it for both improving efficiency and reducing delay of delivery. Additionally, this amendment provides a method to use WebSockets to setup and control an MMT session/presentation.

New Standard Completed for Internet Video Coding

A new standard for video coding suitable for the internet as well as other video applications, was completed at the 120th MPEG meeting. The Internet Video Coding (IVC) standard was developed with the intention of providing the industry with an “Option 1” video coding standard. In ISO/IEC language, this refers to a standard for which patent holders have declared a willingness to grant licenses free of charge to an unrestricted number of applicants for all necessary patents on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis and under other reasonable terms and conditions, to enable others to make, use, and sell implementations of the standard. At the time of completion of the IVC standard, the specification contained no identified necessary patent rights except those available under Option 1 licensing terms. During the development of IVC, MPEG removed from the draft standard any necessary patent rights that it was informed were not available under such Option 1 terms, and MPEG is optimistic of the outlook for the new standard. MPEG encourages interested parties to provide information about any other similar cases. The IVC standard has roughly similar compression capability as the earlier AVC standard, which has become the most widely deployed video coding technology in the world. Tests have been conducted to verify IVC’s strong technical capability, and the new standard has also been shown to have relatively modest implementation complexity requirements.

Evidence of new Video Transcoding Technology using Side Streams

Following a “Call for Evidence” (CfE) issued by MPEG in July 2017, evidence was evaluated at the 120th MPEG meeting to investigate whether video transcoding technology has been developed for transcoding assisted by side data streams that is capable of significantly reducing the computational complexity without reducing compression efficiency. The evaluations of the four responses received included comparisons of the technology against adaptive bit-rate streaming using simulcast as well as against traditional transcoding using full video re-encoding. The responses span the compression efficiency space between simulcast and full transcoding, with trade-offs between the bit rate required for distribution within the network and the bit rate required for delivery to the user. All four responses provided a substantial computational complexity reduction compared to transcoding using full re-encoding. MPEG plans to further investigate transcoding technology and is soliciting expressions of interest from industry on the need for standardization of such assisted transcoding using side data streams.

MPEG currently works on two related topics which are referred to as network-distributed video coding (NDVC) and network-based media processing (NBMP). Both activities involve the network, which is more and more evolving to highly distributed compute and delivery platform as opposed to a bit pipe, which is supposed to deliver data as fast as possible from A to B. This phenomena could be also interesting when looking at developments around 5G, which is actually much more than just radio access technology. These activities are certainly worth to monitor as it basically contributes in order to make networked media resources accessible or even programmable. In this context, I would like to refer the interested reader to the December'17 theme of the IEEE Computer Society Computing Now, which is about Advancing Multimedia Content Distribution.

Publicly available documents from the 120th MPEG meeting can be found here (scroll down to the end of the page). The next MPEG meeting will be held in Gwangju, Korea, January 22-26, 2018. Feel free to contact Christian Timmerer for any questions or comments.

Some of the activities reported above are considered within the Call for Papers at 23rd Packet Video Workshop (PV 2018) co-located with ACM MMSys 2018 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Adaptive media streaming, and content storage, distribution and delivery 
• Network-distributed video coding and network-based media processing 
• Next-generation/future video coding, point cloud compression 
• Audiovisual communication, surveillance and healthcare systems 
• Wireless, mobile, IoT, and embedded systems for multimedia applications 
• Future media internetworking: information-centric networking and 5G 
• Immersive media: virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 360° video and multi-sensory systems, and its streaming 
• Machine learning in media coding and streaming systems 
• Standardization: DASH, MMT, CMAF, OMAF, MiAF, WebRTC, MSE, EME, WebVR, Hybrid Media, WAVE, etc.
• Applications: social media, game streaming, personal broadcast, healthcare, industry 4.0, education, transportation, etc. 

Important dates

• Submission deadline: March 1, 2018 
• Acceptance notification: April 9, 2018 
• Camera-ready deadline: April 19, 2018

HEVC, AOMedia, MPEG, and DASH

Ultra-high definition (UHD) displays are available for quite some time and in terms of video coding the MPEG-HEVC/H.265 standard was designed to support these high resolutions in an efficient way. And it does, with a performance gain of more than twice as much as its predecessor MPEG-AVC/H.264. But it all comes with costs - not only in terms of coding complexity at both encoder and decoder - especially when it comes to licensing. The MPEG-AVC/H.264 licenses are managed by MPEG LA but for HEVC/H.265 there are two patent pools available which makes its industry adoption more difficult than it was for AVC.

HEVC was published by ISO in early 2015 and in the meantime MPEG started discussing about future video coding using its usual approach of open workshops inviting experts from companies inside and outside of MPEG. However, now there’s the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) promising to provide "open, royalty-free and interoperable solutions for the next generation of video delivery” (press release). A good overview and summary is available here which even mentions that a third HEVC patent pool is shaping up (OMG!).

Anyway, even if AOMedia’s "media codecs, media formats, and related technologies” are free like in “free beer” it’s still not clear whether it will taste anything good. Also, many big players are not part of this alliance and could (easily) come up with some patent claims at a later stage jeopardising the whole process (cf. what happened with VP9). In any case, AOMedia is certainly disruptive and together with other disruptive media technologies (e.g., PERSEUS although I have some doubts here) might change the media coding landscape, not clear whether it will be a turn to the better though...

Finally, I was wondering how does this all impact DASH, specifically as MPEG LA recently announced that they want to establish a patent pool for DASH although major players have stated some time ago not to charge anything for DASH (wrt licensing). In terms of media codecs please note that DASH is codec agnostic and it can work with any codec, also those not specified within MPEG and we’ve shown it works some time ago already (using WebM). The main problem is, however, which codecs are supported on which end user devices and how to access them with which API (like HMTL5 & MSE). For example, some Android devices support HEVC but not through HMTL5 & MSE which makes it more difficult to integrate with DASH.

Using MPEG-DASH with HMTL5 & MSE is currently the preferred way how to deploy DASH, even the DASH-IF’s reference player (dash.js) is assuming HTML5 & MSE and companies like bitmovin are offering bitdash following the same principles. Integrating new codecs on the DASH encoding side like on bitmovin’s bitcodin cloud-based transcoding-as-a-service isn’t a big deal and can be done very quickly as soon as software implementations are available. Thus, the problem is more on the plethora of heterogeneous end user devices like smart phones, tablets, laptops, computers, set-top-boxes, TV sets, media gateways, gaming consoles, etc. and their variety of platforms and operating systems.

Therefore, I’m wondering whether AOMedia (or whatever will come in the future) is a real effort changing the media landscape to the better or just another competing standard to choose from … but on the other side, as Andrew S. Tanenbaum has written already in his book on computer networks, “the nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.”

MPEG news: a report from the 112th meeting, Warsaw, Poland

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

The 112th MPEG meeting in Warsaw, Poland was a special meeting for me. It was my 50th MPEG meeting which roughly accumulates to one year of MPEG meetings (i.e., one year of my life I've spend in MPEG meetings incl. traveling - scary, isn't it? ... more on this in another blog post). But what happened at this 112th MPEG meeting (my 50th meeting)...

• Requirements: CDVA, Future of Video Coding Standardization (no acronym yet), Genome compression
• Systems: M2TS (ISO/IEC 13818-1:2015), DASH 3rd edition, Media Orchestration (no acronym yet), TRUFFLE
• Video/JCT-VC/JCT-3D: MPEG-4 AVC, Future Video Coding, HDR, SCC
• Audio: 3D audio
• 3DG: PCC, MIoT, Wearable

MPEG Friday Plenary. Photo (c) Christian Timmerer.

As usual, the official press release and other publicly available documents can be found here. Let's dig into the different subgroups:

Requirements

In requirements experts were working on the Call for Proposals (CfP) for Compact Descriptors for Video Analysis (CDVA) including an evaluation framework. The evaluation framework includes 800-1000 objects (large objects like building facades, landmarks, etc.; small(er) objects like paintings, books, statues, etc.; scenes like interior scenes, natural scenes, multi-camera shots) and the evaluation of the responses should be conducted for the 114th meeting in San Diego.

The future of video coding standardization is currently happening in MPEG and shaping the way for the successor of of the HEVC standard. The current goal is providing (native) support for scalability (more than two spatial resolutions) and 30% compression gain for some applications (requiring a limited increase in decoder complexity) but actually preferred is 50% compression gain (at a significant increase of the encoder complexity). MPEG will hold a workshop at the next meeting in Geneva discussing specific compression techniques, objective (HDR) video quality metrics, and compression technologies for specific applications (e.g., multiple-stream representations, energy-saving encoders/decoders, games, drones). The current goal is having the International Standard for this new video coding standard around 2020.

MPEG has recently started a new project referred to as Genome Compression which is about of course about the compression of genome information. A big dataset has been collected and experts working on the Call for Evidence (CfE). The plan is holding a workshop at the next MPEG meeting in Geneva regarding prospect of Genome Compression and Storage Standardization targeting users, manufactures, service providers, technologists, etc.

Systems

Summer in Warsaw. Photo (c) Christian Timmerer.

The 5th edition of the MPEG-2 Systems standard has been published as ISO/IEC 13818-1:2015 on the 1st of July 2015 and is a consolidation of the 4th edition + Amendments 1-5.

In terms of MPEG-DASH, the draft text of ISO/IEC 23009-1 3rd edition comprising 2nd edition + COR 1 + AMD 1 + AMD 2 + AMD 3 + COR 2 is available for committee internal review. The expected publication date is scheduled for, most likely, 2016. Currently, MPEG-DASH includes a lot of activity in the following areas: spatial relationship description, generalized URL parameters, authentication, access control, multiple MPDs, full duplex protocols (aka HTTP/2 etc.), advanced and generalized HTTP feedback information, and various core experiments:

• SAND (Sever and Network Assisted DASH)
• FDH (Full Duplex DASH)
• SAP-Independent Segment Signaling (SISSI)
• URI Signing for DASH
• Content Aggregation and Playback COntrol (CAPCO)

In particular, the core experiment process is very open as most work is conducted during the Ad hoc Group (AhG) period which is discussed on the publicly available MPEG-DASH reflector.

MPEG systems recently started an activity that is related to media orchestration which applies to capture as well as consumption and concerns scenarios with multiple sensors as well as multiple rendering devices, including one-to-many and many-to-one scenarios resulting in a worthwhile, customized experience.

Finally, the systems subgroup started an exploration activity regarding real-time streaming of file (a.k.a TRUFFLE) which should perform an gap analysis leading to extensions of the MPEG Media Transport (MMT) standard. However, some experts within MPEG concluded that most/all use cases identified within this activity could be actually solved with existing technology such as DASH. Thus, this activity may still need some discussions...

Video/JCT-VC/JCT-3D

The MPEG video subgroup is working towards a new amendment for the MPEG-4 AVC standard covering resolutions up to 8K and higher frame rates for lower resolution. Interestingly, although MPEG most of the time is ahead of industry, 8K and high frame rate is already supported in browser environments (e.g., using bitdash 8K, HFR) and modern encoding platforms like bitcodin. However, it's good that we finally have means for an interoperable signaling of this profile.

In terms of future video coding standardization, the video subgroup released a call for test material. Two sets of test sequences are already available and will be investigated regarding compression until next meeting.

After a successful call for evidence for High Dynamic Range (HDR), the technical work starts in the video subgroup with the goal to develop an architecture ("H2M") as well as three core experiments (optimization without HEVC specification change, alternative reconstruction approaches, objective metrics).

The main topic of the JCT-VC was screen content coding (SCC) which came up with new coding tools that are better compressing content that is (fully or partially) computer generated leading to a significant improvement of compression, approx. or larger than 50% rate reduction for specific screen content.

Audio

The audio subgroup is mainly concentrating on 3D audio where they identified the need for intermediate bitrates between 3D audio phase 1 and 2. Currently, phase 1 identified 256, 512, 1200 kb/s whereas phase 2 focuses on 128, 96, 64, 48 kb/s. The broadcasting industry needs intermediate bitrates and, thus, phase 2 is extended to bitrates between 128 and 256 kb/s.

3DG

MPEG 3DG is working on point cloud compression (PCC) for which open source software has been identified. Additionally, there're new activity in the area of Media Internet of Things (MIoT) and wearable computing (like glasses and watches) that could lead to new standards developed within MPEG. Therefore, stay tuned on these topics as they may shape your future.

The week after the MPEG meeting I met the MPEG convenor and the JPEG convenor again during ICME2015 in Torino but that's another story...

L. Chiariglione, H. Hellwagner, T. Ebrahimi, C. Timmerer (from left to right) during ICME2015. Photo (c) T. Ebrahimi.

MPEG news: a report from the 111th meeting, Geneva, Switzerland

MPEG111 opening plenary.

This blog post is also available at SIGMM records.

The 111th MPEG meeting (note: link includes press release and all publicly available output documents) was held in Geneva, Switzerland showing up some interesting aspects which I’d like to highlight here. Undoubtedly, it was the shortest meeting I’ve ever attended (and my first meeting was #61) as final plenary concluded at 2015/02/20T18:18!

In terms of the requirements (subgroup) it’s worth to mention the call for evidence (CfE) for high-dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) video coding which comprises a first milestone towards a new video coding format. The purpose of this CfE is to explore whether or not (a) the coding efficiency and/or (b) the functionality of the HEVC Main 10 and Scalable Main 10 profiles can be significantly improved for HDR and WCG content. In addition to that requirements issues a draft call for evidence on free viewpoint TV. Both documents are publicly available here.

The video subgroup continued discussions related to the future of video coding standardisation and issued a public document requesting contributions on “future video compression technology”. Interesting application requirements come from over-the-top streaming use cases which request HDR and WCG as well as video over cellular networks. Well, at least the former is something to be covered by the CfE mentioned above. Furthermore, features like scalability and perceptual quality is something that should be considered from ground-up and not (only) as an extension. Yes, scalability is something that really helps a lot in OTT streaming starting from easier content management, cache-efficient delivery, and it allows for a more aggressive buffer modelling and, thus, adaptation logic within the client enabling better Quality of Experience (QoE) for the end user. It seems like complexity (at the encoder) is not such much a concern as long as it scales with cloud deployments such as http://www.bitcodin.com/ (e.g., the bitdash demo area shows some neat 4K/8K/HFR DASH demos which have been encoded with bitcodin). Closely related to 8K, there’s a new AVC amendment coming up covering 8K although one can do it already today (see before) but it’s good to have standards support for this. For HEVC, the JCT-3D/VC issued the FDAM4 for 3D Video Extensions and started with PDAM5 for Screen Content Coding Extensions (both documents being publicly available after an editing period of about a month).

And what about audio, the audio subgroup has decided that ISO/IEC DIS 23008-3 3D Audio shall be promoted directly to IS which means that the DIS was already at such a good state that only editorial comments are applied which actually saves a balloting cycle. We have to congratulate the audio subgroup for this remarkable milestone.

Finally, I’d like to discuss a few topics related to DASH which is progressing towards its 3rd edition which will incorporate amendment 2 (Spatial Relationship Description, Generalized URL parameters and other extensions), amendment 3 (Authentication, Access Control and multiple MPDs), and everything else that will be incorporated within this year, like some aspects documented in the technologies under consideration or currently being discussed within the core experiments (CE).

Currently, MPEG-DASH conducts 5 core experiments:

• Server and Network Assisted DASH (SAND)
• DASH over Full Duplex HTTP-based Protocols (FDH)
• URI Signing for DASH (CE-USD)
• SAP-Independent Segment SIgnaling (SISSI)
• Content aggregation and playback control (CAPCO)

The description of core experiments is publicly available and, compared to the previous meeting, we have a new CE which is about content aggregation and playback control (CAPCO) which "explores solutions for aggregation of DASH content from multiple live and on-demand origin servers, addressing applications such as creating customized on-demand and live programs/channels from multiple origin servers per client, targeted preroll ad insertion in live programs and also limiting playback by client such as no-skip or no fast forward.” This process is quite open and anybody can join by subscribing to the email reflector.

The CE for DASH over Full Duplex HTTP-based Protocols (FDH) is becoming major and basically defines the usage of DASH for push-features of WebSockets and HTTP/2. At this meeting MPEG issues a working draft and also the CE on Server and Network Assisted DASH (SAND) got its own part 5 where it goes to CD but documents are not publicly available. However, I'm pretty sure I can report more on this next time, so stay tuned or feel free to comment here.

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..