INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11
CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 N9561

January 2008 – Antalya, TR

Source:

Convener of MPEG

Status:

Approved by WG11

Subject:

MPEG Press Release

Date:

2008 January 18

 

Scalable Video Coding Shown to be State of the Art

Antalya, TR – The 83rd MPEG meeting was held in Antalya, Turkey during 14-18 January 2008, with the support of Beko-Grundig.

 

Highlights of the 83rd Meeting

SVC Validated by Rigorous Subjective Tests

MPEG has completed verification tests that measure the capabilities of the recently-standardized scalable video coding (SVC) extension of the ITU-T Rec. H.264 | ISO/IEC 14996-10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard.  The results of these tests indicate that for an increase of less than or equal to 10% of bit rate overhead for equivalent quality, scalability can be achieved for various types of applications. In fact, in some key applications, no increase in bit rate was needed at all.  The test report is found in the publicly-available MPEG document N 9577, which can be obtained from the MPEG web site at  http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/quality_tests.htm.

Scalable video coding (SVC) was developed by the Joint Video Team (JVT) of ISO/IEC MPEG & ITU-T VCEG in a standardization project completed in October 2007. The SVC enhancement of the AVC core design includes the specification of three scalable profiles (the Scalable Baseline, Scalable High, and Scalable High Intra profiles). It enables the construction of SVC bitstreams that contain reduced bit rate substreams. The substreams can be extracted from the complete bitstream, thereby providing scalability in terms of bit rate, decoding complexity, and frame rate, spatial resolution, or quality. In typical cases, one or more of the substreams of the SVC bitstream will be fully compatible with ordinary AVC decoders. Frame rate scalability (also known as temporal scalability) or spatial scalability refers to the presence of a substream with a lower sampling rate than the overall bitstream in terms of time or spatial resolution. Quality scalability refers to the presence of a substream with the same sampling rate as the parent SVC stream, but having a lower bit rate with a correspondingly lower quality.

The verification tests were conducted using conditions suitable for a range of possible application scenarios for progressive video, including

For the performance evaluations, SVC was compared against AVC single layer coding by means of subjective testing. Subjective tests were performed following relevant international recommendations using a controlled environment and a high number of test subjects.

The results of these tests indicate that these various types of scalability for these applications can be achieved with a bit rate overhead typically equal to or less than 10% when compared to AVC single layer coding using only the highest resolution in the test case. In the HDTV and movie cases, comparable quality was achieved with no apparent need to increase bit rate at all.  The bit rate savings obtained by SVC compared to AVC simulcast transmission depend on the particular test case, and were found to be between 17% and 40% of the simulcast bit rate. These bit rate savings relative to simulcast are particularly important for applications in which video must be provided with different spatial resolutions, for which simulcast would previously have been the only available AVC-based standardized solution.

These tests confirm the SVC design to be an impressive achievement.  For the first time, a standards-based solution has been designed that can enable scalable video coding with only a negligible-to-minor impact on compression performance.  Moreover, since the SVC design is based closely on AVC, that compression capability is truly state-of-the-art.

Other Notable Accomplishments of the 83rd Meeting

Call for Proposals Issued for Low Complexity 3D Mesh Compression

MPEG has issued a Call for Proposals for Low Complexity 3D Mesh Compression with the objective to standardize new technologies for the encoding of static 3D meshes, by providing means for efficient compression and streaming while emphasizing low complexity decoding and encoding processes. Such technologies will complete the current MPEG tools for 3D graphics compression and should enable real-time applications on devices with low computational and memory capacities (PDAs, mobile phones…). More information can be found in the document N 9651 which can be obtained from the MPEG web site at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/working_documents.htm.

Contributions Sought for 3D Video Test Material

At its 83rd meeting, MPEG issued an updated call for contributions on 3D Video Test Material for its work on Free Viewpoint Television (FTV). FTV is a new framework that includes a coded representation for video and depth information that allows the user at the receiver side to view the video scene dynamically from multiple viewpoints (multiview).  To accomplish this functionality, FTV enables the generation of high-quality intermediate views (views derived from multiple sources) at the receiver.

As the study of FTV has progressed, MPEG has determined that the first phase of standardization for FTV is expected to be 3DV (3D Video), which is video for 3D displays. It is anticipated that while multiview displays may be able to show a relatively large number of views to a user, for efficiency reasons only a lower number of views would typically be transmitted, along with additional scene depth information. At the receiver side, the views to be displayed would then be generated from the transmitted views and associated depth information.

To facilitate the work on this subject, MPEG is soliciting the submission of test material for such applications, including multiview video data, associated depth information, and other key information needed to help determine the requirements of 3DV applications. The Call for contributions on 3DV test material has been issued to update the prior Call for test material on the broader FTV topic. More information can be found in the document N 9595 which can be obtained from the MPEG web site at  http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/working_documents.htm.

Media Streaming MAF Flows to Completion

At its 83rd meeting, MPEG completed the standardization of the ISO/IEC 23000-5 “Media Streaming Application Format”.  This new standard is aimed at distribution of governed media resources, metadata and related information over streaming channels, such as IPTV and digital broadcasting, to receiver devices (called Media Streaming Players), in which the received content can be played in real time or stored in a file for possible further secure distribution.

The standard specifies how selected MPEG technologies are integrated to achieve this goal, and references the data formats exchanged between several devices typically needed in a media streaming scenario, including a Content Provider Device, License Provider Device, Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) Tool Provider Device, Domain Management Device and Media Streaming Player.

New Base Media File Format Readied for Publishing

SC 29 WG 11 and WG 1 (MPEG and JPEG) are pleased to announce that a new 3rd edition of the ISO Base Media File Format will be published shortly.  This specification underlies the MP4 file format, Motion JPEG 2000, 3GPP, 3GPP2 and other file format standards and has provided an important underlying layer of cohesion in international multimedia.  This new edition (ISO/IEC 14496-12), which is technically identical to ISO/IEC 15444-12, integrates a number of amendments and corrigenda including, most recently, support for FLUTE/ALC (one to many) transmission of files.  Free availability is expected in the first quarter of 2008 at

http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/.

Contact MPEG

Digging Deeper Once Again

Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. The experts past and present have contributed a series of white-papers that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, so if something you are interested is not there yet, it may appear there shortly - but do not hesitate to request it as well. You can start your MPEG adventure at: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/mpeg-tech.htm

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

No. 84, Archamps, FR, 28 April to 02 May, 2008

No. 85, Hannover, DE, 21-25 July, 2008

No. 86, Busan, KR, 13-17 October, 2008

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convener of MPEG, Italy)
Via Borgionera, 103
10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel  +39 011 935 04 61
Email: mailto:leonardo@chiariglione.org

or

Arianne T. Hinds
Ricoh | IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company
6300 Diagonal Highway, MS 04N
Boulder, CO 80301, USA
Tel +1 303 924 6984
Email: arianne@us.ibm.com

This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg

The text and details related to the Call mentioned above (together with other current Calls) are in the Hot News section, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond the Calls.

The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by non-MPEG members.   

Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email can contact Arianne Hinds using the contact information provided above.