MPEG131 Press Release: WG11 (MPEG) issues Committee Draft of Conformance and Reference Software for Essential Video Coding (EVC)

MPEG131 Press Release: Index

WG11 (MPEG) issues Committee Draft of Conformance and Reference Software for Essential Video Coding (EVC)

At its 131st meeting, WG11 (MPEG) promoted the specification of the Conformance and Reference Software for Essential Video Coding (ISO/IEC 23094-4) to Committee Draft (CD) level. The Essential Video Coding (EVC) standard (ISO/IEC 23094-1) provides an improved compression capability over existing video coding standards with the timely publication of licensing terms. The issued specification of the Conformance and Reference Software for Essential Video Coding includes conformance bitstreams as well as a reference software for the generation of those conformance bitstreams. This important standard will greatly help the industry achieve effective interoperability between products using EVC and provide valuable information to ease the development of such products. The final specification is expected to be available in early 2021.

MPEG131 Press Release: Neural Network Compression for Multimedia Applications – WG11 (MPEG) progresses to Committee Draft

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Neural Network Compression for Multimedia Applications – WG11 (MPEG) progresses to Committee Draft

Artificial neural networks have been adopted for a broad range of tasks in multimedia analysis and processing, such as visual and acoustic classification, extraction of multimedia descriptors or image and video coding. The trained neural networks for these applications contain a large number of parameters (i.e., weights), resulting in a considerable size. Thus, transferring them to a number of clients using them in applications (e.g., mobile phones, smart cameras) requires a compressed representation of neural networks.

WG11 (MPEG) has completed the CD of the specification at its 131st meeting. Considering the fact that the compression of neural networks is likely to have a hardware-dependent and hardware-independent component, the standard is designed as a toolbox of compression technologies. The specification contains different parameter sparsification, parameter reduction (e.g., matrix decomposition), parameter quantization, and entropy coding methods, that can be assembled to encoding pipelines combining one or more (in the case of sparsification/reduction) methods from each group. The results show that trained neural networks for many common multimedia problems such as image or audio classification or image compression can be compressed to 10% of their original size with no or very small performance loss, and even significantly more at small performance loss. The specification is independent of a particular neural network exchange format, and interoperability with common formats is described in the annexes.

MPEG131 Press Release: MPEG Immersive Video (MIV) progresses to Committee Draft

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MPEG Immersive Video (MIV) progresses to Committee Draft

At the 131st MPEG meeting, it was decided to output the committee draft of ISO/IEC 23090-12 MPEG Immersive Video. The name was changed from “Immersive Video” to “MPEG Immersive Video” (MIV), to clearly differentiate from other uses of the term “Immersive Video” in general parlance. MIV supports compression of immersive video content, in which a real or virtual 3D scene is captured by multiple real or virtual cameras. The use of this standard enables the storage and distribution of immersive video content over existing and future networks, for playback with 6 degrees of freedom of view position and orientation.

MPEG131 Press Release: Carriage of Geometry-based Point Cloud Data progresses to Committee Draft

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Carriage of Geometry-based Point Cloud Data progresses to Committee Draft

At its 131st meeting, WG11 (MPEG) has promoted the carriage of Geometry-based point cloud data (ISO/IEC 23090-18) to the Committee Draft stage, the first milestone of ISO standard development process. This standard is the second standard introducing the support of volumetric media in the industry-famous ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) family of standards after the standard on the carriage of video-based point cloud data (ISO/IEC 23090-10). This standard (i.e., ISO/IEC 23090-18) supports the carriage of point cloud data within multiple file format tracks in order to support individual access of each attributes comprising a single point cloud. Additionally, it also allows the carriage of point cloud data in one file format track for simple applications. Understanding the point cloud data could cover large geographical area and the size of the data could be massive in some application the standard support 3D region-based partial access of the data stored in the file so that the application can efficiently access the portion of data required to be processed. It is currently expected that the standard will reach its final milestone by mid-2021.

MPEG131 Press Release: Multi-Image Application Format adds support of HDR

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Multi-Image Application Format adds support of HDR

Within less than two years after it has reached its last milestone of standard developments the Multi-Image Application Format (MIAF; ISO/IEC 23000-22) has become the default format for the storage of still pictures within the smartphones. However, it lacks support of one of the killer features for image quality enhancement, i.e., High Dynamic Range (HDR). To quickly answer such market needs, WG11 (MPEG) has promoted the 2nd Amendment to the Multi-Image Application Format, MIAF HEVC Advanced HDR profile, and other clarifications, its first milestone of ISO standard development process. This amendment adds support of the use of PQ (Perceptual Quantizer) and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) color transfer characteristics and P3 mastering display color volume properties with D65 white point for HEVC encoded still pictures to support widely used HDR technologies. It is currently expected that the standard will reach its final milestone by mid-2021.

MPEG131 Press Release: Widening support for storage and delivery of MPEG-5 EVC

MPEG131 Press Release: Index

Widening support for storage and delivery of MPEG-5 EVC

At its 131st meeting, WG11 (MPEG) widened the support for storage and delivery of MPEG-5 Essential Video Coding (EVC; ISO/IEC 23094-1).

1. One of the oldest but most popular MPEG standards for content delivery, MPEG-2 Systems (ISO/IEC 13818-1) is adding support for EVC. WG11 (MPEG) promoted the 3rd amendment to the 2019 edition of the MPEG-2 Systems standard to the Committee Draft of Amendment stage, the first milestone of the ISO standard development process. It is entitled Carriage of EVC in MPEG-2 TS and update of the MPEG-H 3D Audio descriptor and provides a definition of all of the necessary descriptors and T-STD model extension to carry MPEG-5 EVC elementary streams.
2. Recognizing the use of video coding standards for still picture applications is rapidly growing in the market, WG11 (MPEG) promoted the 3rd amendment to the Image File Format to the Committee Draft of Amendment stage, the first milestone of ISO standard development process. It is entitled Support for VVC, EVC, slideshows, and other improvements and includes support of the most advanced video coding standard, Versatile Video Coding (VVC), as well to provide a complete list of choices to the markets whose requirements vary widely.

It is currently expected that both standards will reach its final milestone by mid-2021.

MPEG131 Press Release: WG11 (MPEG) issues a Call for Proposals on extension and improvements to ISO/IEC 23092 standard series

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WG11 (MPEG) issues a Call for Proposals on extension and improvements to ISO/IEC 23092 standard series

The current MPEG-G standard series (ISO/IEC 23092) is the first generation of MPEG standards that address the representation, compression, and transport of genome sequencing data, supporting with a single unified approach data from the output of sequencing machines up to secondary and tertiary analysis. New technology for compressing and indexing a wide variety of annotation data is currently under advanced standardization phase.

In line with the traditional MPEG practice of investigating and applying whenever possible improvements to the performance and functionality of its standards, at its 131st meeting, MPEG has issued a Call for Proposals (CfP) addressing two specific objectives: (i) to increase the speed performance of massively parallel codec implementations and (ii) to enable advanced queries and search capabilities on the compressed data.

Answers to the CfP are expected to be evaluated prior to the 132nd MPEG meeting. Best performing technology are expected to be introduced in a new high-performance profile of current ISO/IEC 23092 standard series.