BUSINESS PLAN FOR JTC 1/SC 29
PERIOD COVERED:October 2009– October 2010
SUBMITTED BY: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 Chairman
1.0MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
SC 29 has been working on: Coding of Audio, Picture, Multimedia and Hypermedia Information.
SC 29 has Advisory Group on Management, Maintenance Task Force and two active Working Groups below.
WG 1: Coding of Still Pictures
WG 11: Coding of Moving Pictures and Audio
SC 29 has 24 P-members and 16 O-members.
In this period, SC 29 held one SC Plenary meeting, WG 1 held three WG meetings, and WG 11 held four WG meetings. The numbers of participants are shown below.
-SC 29: 23rdSC 29 Plenary meeting (12)
-WG 1: 50thmeeting (24), 51stmeeting (33) and52ndmeeting (_*)
-WG 11: 90thmeeting (318), 91stmeeting (375), 92ndmeeting (_*) and93rdmeeting (_*)
Since November 2009, SC 29 had _*ballots(_* for NP, _* for CD, _* for FCD, _* for PDTR, _* for FDIS and _* for DTR) in this period and had sufficient number of participation of P-members._* International Standards (_* for TR and _* for IS/AMD/COR) were published.
* The actual numbers will be put here later.
1. 1CHAIRMAN'S REMARKS
The operation in this period was good and supported by significantly active participation and work by the members. The standards developed by SC 29 have been widely deployed in many services such as digital broadcasting, network-based distribution, content production, audio-visual archive as well as commercial products such as broadcasting receiver, mobile phone, camera, recorder, viewer/player, editing software and packaged content. SC 29 is continuing its work on the development of standards to serve the industry and to provide new and excellent user-experience through widest use of digital media information.
One noteworthy progress is the new collaborative work of WG 11 with ITU-T SG16 Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) on High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). This work is performed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC). 27 complete proposals to the Call for Proposals have been received and the associated video materials were evaluated in extensive subjective tests. The results of the evaluation have shown that some proposals exhibited a substantial improvement in compression performances as compared to the corresponding Advanced Video Coding (AVC) anchors. This indicates the significant advancement in video compression is expected, following MPEG-2 and AVC which have been deployed in lots of applications and services all over the world.
WG 1 has completed its work on five parts of Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) XR standards: System architecture, Image coding specification, Motion JPEG XR, Conformance testing and Reference software.
Other achievements in this period are described in 2.0 PERIOD REVIEW.
1.2JTC 1/SC 29 STATEMENT OF SCOPE
There is no change of the SC 29 title and scope. The current title and scope of work are:
Title: Coding of Audio, Picture, Multimedia and Hypermedia Information
Scope: Standardization of coded representation of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information -and sets of compression and control functions for use with such information - such as
- Audio information
- Bi-level and Limited Bits-per-pixel Still Pictures
- Digital Continuous-tone Still Pictures
- Computer Graphic Images
- Moving Pictures and Associated Audio
- Multimedia and Hypermedia Information for Real-time Final Form Interchange
- Audio Visual Interactive Script ware
Excluded: Character Coding
1.3PROJECT REPORT
Detailed Programme of Work is available on the SC 29 web site (
1.4CO-OPERATION AND COMPETITION
SC 29 hasmany liaisons with other organizations. This means that itcan meet the requirements and expectations of the standards users from the other communities better through regular communication and the exchange of documents. SC 29 has6 internal Liaisons in JTC 1, 8 internalLiaisons within ISO/TC and IEC/TCs. In addition, SC 29 has 16Category A Liaisons, 3Category B Liaisons, and 36Category C Liaisons. Especially SC 29 has long and productive collaboration with ITU-T.Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a Working Group of SC 29/WG 1 and of ITU-T/SG16. From WG 11, widely-deployed MPEG-2 Video and Systems are the common texts with ITU-T Recommendations. The Joint Video Team (JVT) under WG 11 with ITU-T/SG16 Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) has produced twin text standards such as Advanced Video Coding (AVC) including its extensions including Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and Multi-view Video Coding (MVC).SC 29 welcomes the agreement of WG 11 with ITU-T/SG16 on launching a joint standards development projects towards high performance video coding. The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) is expected to produce even higher efficiency video coding standard(s) compared to the existing AVC.WG 11 has another collaboration activity with ITU-T/SG16,Advanced IPTV Terminals (AIT). SC 29 expects further collaborations in other areas such as MPEG Media Transport (MMT).
See SC 29 Web site (
2.0PERIOD REVIEW
WG 1 conducts six active projects: JPEG, JBIG-2, JPEG2000, JPEG XR, JPSearch and AIC.
JPEGis going to have JPEG part 5 at the stage of FDIS in July, which officially standardizes JFIF (JPEG File Interchange Format). This standard is expected to provide an opportunity to include new developments relating to image metadata such as JPSearch metadata into the JFIF file format.
The color amendment to JBIG-2 will reach its FDAM stage in July. This will allow images of office documents which contain only “spot” color to be more efficiently compressed than by the use of standard baseline JPEG.
JPEG 2000 is a family of standards which provide highest compression and usabilityof images. JPEG 2000 Part 9, Interactive tools, APIs and protocols (JPIP) has passed through interoperability testing between several vendors using different implementations. Servers and clients from different vendors were shown to fulfill interoperability, demonstrating JPIP’s utility as a vendor-independent interchange method.
Digital Cinema (DC) ad hoc group is working on additional frame-rates for DC archival applications. This will allow support for a wide range of content source types.
Five parts of JPEG XR, system architecture, image coding specification, motion JPEG XR, conformance testing and reference software,have been completed. Part 1 will provide valuable information to aid in the effective deployment of a variety of products that support the JPEG XR standard.
JPSearch(ISO/IEC 24800, Still Image Search) is a project that aims to develop a standard framework for search, retrieval and exchange of images with or without accompanying metadata.Part 2 (Registration, identification and management of schema and ontology) and Part 3 (JPSearch Query Format) are at their FDIS stages. Part 2 provides standardized metadata schema (JPSearch Core Metadata) and supports minimal interoperability among systems with heterogeneous metadata format.
Advanced Image Coding and Evaluation Methodologies (AIC) is a project for standardization of a new evaluation approaches and image compression system for any potential technologies. AIC ad hoc group announced the production of calls for technologies, use cases, requirement, evaluation procedures and test materials for three targeted applications: medical imaging, camera sensors imaging and security applications.
WG1 has launched Innovation group. JPEG Innovation is chartered to increase awareness of JPEG family of standards, to identify, explore and investigate new image related standard topics, to engage with industry and academia to hold workshops and seminars on these areas.
WG 11 conducts many projects such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-7, MPEG-21,MPEG-A to MPEG-E, MPEG-V, MPEG-M and MPEG-U. Some of notable results are described below.
Following the review of the responses to the Call for Evidence on High-Performance Video Coding (HVC), WG 11 agreed to launch a joint standards development project towards high performance coding of video, targeting resolutions from QVGA to higher than those used currently for HDTV. A new joint Collaborative Team on video coding (JCT-VC) with ITU-T/SG16 was agreed to be established. A joint Call fro Proposals was issued together in January 2010. From March to April, 27 responses to the Call were evaluated. The results have indicated substantial compression gains over the current AVC. The performance of the best proposals can be roughly characterized as exhibiting the compression capability to achieve similar quality using only half of the bit rate. The JCT-VC has begun identification and integration of proposed design elements toward development of a new video coding design to be known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).
Spatial Audio Object Coding (SAOC) is an advanced technology for the efficient distribution of audio combined with features for personalization and interactivity. With SAOC, any number of audio objects may be distributed over one mono or stereo stream, enabling user interactivity (for example, changing the volume and position of any audio object) in any low bandwidth application. The versatility of the technology makes it possible that the same SAOC content can be played back on any device – stereo, surround or headphones (Virtual-3D) or can even be decoded with a non-SAOC device.
WG 11 has amended a Video Signature to MPEG-7 Visual. This amendment is referred to as MPEG-7 Visual Signature, collectively with Image Signature published in April 2009. The visual signature enables extremely fast searches of video sequences across large sets of video data by defining a very compact description technology. The descriptor is derived directly from analysis of the visual content and is robust to heavy compression and editing.
WG 11 has completed the standardization of the new Binary Format for Scenes (BIFS) ExtendedCore2D profile as FDAM to ISO/IEC 14496-11. This profile incorporates additional nodes and technologies specially designed for resource limited devices such as mobile phones.
MPEG-M, the MPEG eXtensible Middleware (MXM) has reached FDIS stage. Through its set of standardized APIs and architecture, MXM provides a framework by which a potential global market of MXM applications can access individual MPEG tools in a seamless way. The standard will also facilitate the deployment of innovative business models since it enables the easy design and implementation of media-handling value chains.
Four parts of MPEG-Vare now at the stage of FCD. Part 1 describes the architecture of the standard. Part 2 “Control Information”, provides metadata representation of device capabilities and user preferences to be used for the information exchange between a controlling device and the real actuator or sensors. Part 3 “Sensory Information” provides metadata to represent sensory effects such as temperature, wind, vibration, fog and more. Part 4 “Avatar Characteristics” provides metadata to commonly represent information about Avatars for the exchange of virtual characters between virtual worlds.
MPEG-U (rich media user interface) has reached FDIS stage. It standardizes the packaging, delivery, representation and communication formats for widgets, fundamental building blocks for graphical user interfaces. This new standard adopts the W3C widget representation and extends it with an MPEG-U player. The standard provides a complete framework that is agnostic to the graphical representation format of the widget itself so that it can be used in a non-Web based environment without a browser.
WG 11 and ITU-T/SG16 have agreed to develop the Advanced IPTV Terminals (AIT) standard project jointly. AIT will enable service aggregation to enable service providers to offer users a plethora of innovative services. AIT is expected to be based of many available MPEG and ITU-T technologies for media processing and signaling.
2.1MARKET REQUIREMENTS
From WG 1, JPEG has been widely used in digital photography. Millions of JPEG-coded images are produced, transmitted, viewed, shared and archived every day with digital cameras, mobile phones, PCs and many other products supporting digital media. JPEG 2000 is used for Digital Cinema (DC) distribution to theatres. JPEG XR offers the potential to give cost and compression benefits to users producing high-quality, high dynamic-range images. JPEG XR is already widely deployed in PC industry. The manufacturers of camera and printer peripherals have shown their interest in JPEG XR.
In JPSearchis the standard to provide ability to reuse metadata, a common query format and search semantics for image search and a common format for handling context in image search. Part 3 of JPSearch is designed to ensure the interoperability among users of various different metadata specifications for their image data.
From WG 11, MPEG-4 Part 10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) has been widely used for digital broadcasting systems, visual communication equipment, IPTV servers and terminals, optical video discs, surveillance systems, digital video recorders, camcorders, portable video players and so on. One of the extentions to AVC, Multi-view Video Coding (MVC), Stereo High Profile is used for stereoscopic 3D applications employing optical video discs and so on.
MP3 (MPEG-1 audio layer3), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), HE-AAC have been used for digital broadcasting, mobile handsets and various audio players.Audio Lossless Coding (ALS) is used for high quality applications. Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC) will be able to be used for generic applications such as unidirectional, conversational, communication, broadcasting, play-back types of applications.
MPEG-7 is expected to provide an excellent solution to search, detection and retrieval over large scale databases and resources on the web. Several examples can be observed and Visual Signature is expected to be used to observe any intended or unintended distribution of media contents.Lightweight Application Scene Representation (LASeR) has been used in various services for mobile phones.The latest amendment of LASeR is backward compatible with the existing profile/level which is actually used. Therefore the current applications can smoothly transit to the new profile.
Advanced IPTV Terminals (AIT) strives to extend current IPTV technology toward the seamless integration of personal content creation and distribution, shopping-commerce, social networks and Internet distribution of digital media. LASeR and other MPEG standards such as Rights Expression Language and MPEG Multimedia Middleware are considered for advanced features of IPTV terminals.
The HEVC is expected to be completed in 2012. This new video coding standard will provide two-times compression gain over the current state of the art video coding. It is expected to be used for HD class applications both for home and mobile and even for Ultra HD applications.
2.2ACHIEVEMENTS
See SC 29 Web site (
2.3RESOURCES
Sufficient resources areavailable for JPEG, JBIG-2, JPEG 2000, JPSearch, AIC, JPEG XR, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-7, MPEG-21,MPEG-A to MPEG-E,MPEG-M, MPEG-Vand MPEG-U projects.
2.4ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
SC 29 has been working on standardization of efficient representation and control of multimedia information. The standards should provide the most cost-effective, energy-effective and quality-preserving ways to handle that information, so that they would save storage capacity, transmission bandwidth and so on. SC 29 will encourage its WG members to choose tools and schemes for their work, which have less negative impact on environments, as far as the consensus of the members is reached.SC 29 will also encourage its WG members to consider good trade-off of performances and complexity of their algorithms as one of evaluation criteria, so that it allows less energy-consuming implementation and potential competitiveness of the standards.
2.5PARTICIPATION METRICS
Meeting:
Ballot:
3.0FOCUS OF NEXT WORK PERIOD
WG 1 expects progress in all active projects. Work on some amendments to JPEG 2000 is ongoing. Digital Cinema (DC) ad hoc group is continuing its work on additional frame-rates for DC and archival applications.
In JPSearch, the benchmark description for JPSearch framework is discussed. A draft call for proposals has been issued. Further progress in discussion regarding requirements of benchmark description framework with relevant usage scenarios is expected.
JPEG Innovation group will work on possible new image related standard topics, to raise the momentum for starting new standardization items.
WG 11expects active work on HEVC standardization. The responses to the Call for Proposal have already shown promising advances in coding efficiency compared to the existing AVC standards. The new video coding technology should provide sufficient compression with high quality and reasonable complexity forhigher resolution video beyond HDTV or HDTV-class video for mobile devices.
Advanced IPTV Terminals (AIT) standard is expected to achieve FDIS status in July 2011.
Another promising work on Unified speech and audio coding is expected to make good progress in the next period supported by collaborative development of reference software source codes.
MPEG Media Transport (MMT) is expected to be a new standardization project. WG 11 is now studying the current limitations of available standards and new technologies in the area of media download and streaming, delivery of MPEG media across emerging network environments, quality of service/experience as well as cross layer technologies.
Further progresses are expected within WG 11 for FTV/3DV.
In summary, SC 29 works on coding of rich media contents with the set of tools to support the production, circulation, access and consumption of such contents. Further work on coding is under way to continue to serve industry needs as application requirements move forward into supporting higher levels of image/video quality and more variety of application scenarios.
3.1DELIVERABLES
See SC 29 Web site (
3.2STRATEGIES
SC 29 will continue to provide information on the progress of standardization work to the public through SC’sand WGs’ web sites below as well as press releases or awareness events in order for attention to be paid to the area of the multimedia informationtechnology.
SC 29:
SC 29/ WG 1:
SC 29/WG 11:
SC 29/WG 11 (for meeting):
SC 29 will continue the practice of making their standards containing conformance testing bitstreams and reference software accessible as the freely available standards from ISO/IEC. SC 29 is pleased to hear the requirements from the industry, so that appropriate WG under SC 29 would work to deliver the standards which meet the requirements.
3.2.1 RISKS
SC 29 identifies three possible risks:
-Lack of participants: Two working groups currently have enough resources (WG 1: 30, WG 11: 300 people), however SC 29 should constantly monitor attendance of WGs.
-Management of documents: The WGs depend on having good electronic document repositories and systems and the maintenance of these is important for the efficient working of the WGs. Currently such repositories and systems are operated and maintained by the WG members and SC 29 Secretariat.