EARLY DAYS OF VIDEO CODING STANDARDIZATION

10 October 2013

Sakae OKUBOVTV Japan Inc.

1. Progress of video coding technologies2. History of video coding standardization3. Guiding principles of the H.261 development4. Reference Model methodology for consensus building5. Comparison of H.261 and H.265/HEVC standardization6. Merits and demerits of standardization7. Challenge to the video coding standardization

Outline

1. Progress of video coding technologies

DCT Discrete Cosine TransformDPCM Differential PCMMC Motion CompensationPCM Pulse Code Modulation

Simple Interframe Prediction

Transform

DCT

Vector Quantization

VQ

Hybrid CodingMC + DCT + VLCMC + VQ + VLC

Motion Compensated Interframe Prediction

ＭＣ

Block-based Coding

DPCM

PCM

Pel-based Coding

1950s

1960s

1970s

Early 1980s

Late1980sand

beyond

Huffman Code

Variable Length Coding (VLC)

Arithmetic Code

2. History of video coding standardization

AVC: Advanced Video CodingHEVC: High Efficiency Video CodingMVC: Multiview Video CodingSVC: Scalable Video Coding

• Year indicates when the first version was issued

• Blue indicates common or twin text standard between ITU-T and ISO/IEC

• Yellow mark indicates the presenter's involvement

3. Guiding principles of the Specialists Group to develop H.261

• The Specialists Group should collaborate as closely as possible in defining a worldwide standard for 'second generation' codecs.

• The best way to achieve this is eventually by conducting a 'hardware' related project involving international transmission tests.

• The aim will be to jointly formulate a specification by means of largely independent but parallel hardware experiments in participating countries.

• The Group will aim to avoid competition on standards, but at a later date competition on codec manufacture can be encouraged.

As recorded in the report of the first meeting in December 1984

4. Reference Model methodology for consensus building

Original model RM1

Next model RM2

Proposal 1 to add a new element

Proposal 2 to improve an existing

element

Merit of a proposal is demonstrated against the original model.

Reference Models in various standardization

HEVC: High Efficiency Video Coding

5. Comparison of H.261 and H.265/HEVC standardization

Observations- H.265/HEVC required 10 times human efforts than H.261.- Starting early makes the work easy.

6. Merits and demerits of standardization

+ A product from any company can be connected to the network or interwork with another product.

+ Low cost can be expected with mass production according to the standard.

+ “Non-tariff barrier” can be avoided by use of the standard.

- Technology is fixed at the time of standardization.

Example of digital TV broadcasting: Terrestrial digital broadcasting adopted MPEG-2 video coding in Japan. Currently 4 times higher efficiency H.265/HEVC video coding is available, but the replacement is impossible.

7. Challenge to the video coding standardization

Some (partial) solutions:- Specifying only the decoder to allow freedom of

the encoder design- Use of negotiation if a bidirectional control

channel is available- Software replacement in case of software codec

How can we enjoy new evolving technologies by achieving standardization and backward compatibility at the same time?

Back up

‘B’ system RX

‘A’ system RX

‘A’ systemRX

‘B’ system RX

‘A’/’B’ switchable

RX

Gateway

‘A’&’B’ systemTX

‘B’ system TX

‘B’ system TX

‘A’ system TX

a) Simulcasting

b) Gateway

c) Switchable receiver‘A’ system: Current generation‘B’ system: New generationTX: TransmitterRX: Receiver

‘A’ system stream

‘B’ system stream

‘A’ system stream

‘B’ system stream

‘B’ system stream

‘A’ system stream

System evolution in one way communications