International organisation for standardisation

5.1.2General status of work

The two parts related to RVC (ISO/IEC 23001-4 Codec Configuration Representation in MPEG-B and ISO/IEC FCD 23002-4 Video Tool Library in MPEG-C) were progressed into FCD status. 23001-4 now includes an annex providind a normative specification of reduced CAL (RVC-CAL), and also the specification of BSDL profiling for RVC (denoted as RVC-BSDL). Annex C (listing "supported standards") was removed – in fact, 23001-4 should in principle be supportive for any standard or non-standard video coding algorithms, where it is solely a matter of tool library definitions and their completeness which of those are possibly instantiated. For 23002-4, various updates were made. The overall section structure was revised, such that new tool specifications, software and conformance testing can easily be added in by a later time. The first version of the MPEG tool library will be complete in a way such that all tools from MPEG-2 MP, MPEG-4 part 2 SP, MPEG-4 AVC BP and potentially SVC BP will be provided. A new work plan was set up, with more complete planning for the ongoing implementation and specification of MPEG-4 part 2 ASP, MPEG-4 AVC HP, as well as SVC HP, which will become an amendment to 23002-4. It was in particular finally decided that the context-adaptive entropy decoders of MPEG-4 AVC need to be implemented as dedicated FUs, such that for these cases it will not be possible to determine the validity of a bitstream on the basis of knowing the BSDL expression. Furthermore, it was decided that conformance testing and reference software will each be included as a separate section into the standard (also by a later amendment).

The reference software (CAL implementation of tools) will be extracted from the current RSM software. RSM however also includes a number of supportive non-normative tools which shall simplify developments based on RVC. Further tools, such as automatic generation of C code or VHDL description from CAL have been proposed in Archamps. All these have been combined in a software packages entitled RVC-SPS v1.0 (Simulation, Profiling and Synthesis Tools). It is expected to become a TR (non-normative part) in MPEG-C later.
To clarify procedures that would be applicable when new tools are proposed to MPEG to be included in the video toolbox, a document entitles “Process for Extending the MPEG RVC Toolbox” was produced. Besides the necessary application-related requirements and information of the tool’s performance (e.g. compression performance), other criteria include complexity/parallelization capabilities, similarity with already existing tools. Furthermore, it is expected that associated encoder source code will be provided, such that it can be judged easily whether the performance relies on a high degree of encoder optimization or on the individual benefits of the decoding tool itself.
Achievements that were made so far in the exploration of using RVC for non-MPEG standards (AVS example) have been summarized in the N9782 “Status Report on using RVC Framework with non-MPEG Tools and Standards”.

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