International organisation for standardisation organisation internationale de normalisation

4MPEG-H

MPEG-H will be the new umbrella for the High Efficiency Video Coding and the related Systems and Audio standards. The vision for MPEG-H was defined at the 99^th meeting in N12312 Context and Objectives of MPEG-H.
MPEG foresees the initial standards of MPEG-H to include video coding (HEVC), advanced audio coding and MPEG Media Transport. The Definition of graphics and user interfaces will come later.
At this meeting, work focused on Audio for MPEG-H as well as an extension of HEVC Video.

1. MPEG-H Part 2: HEVC

Profiles For the upcoming video coding standard, profiles need to be defined. At the 99^th meeting, consensus was to have just one profile. However, there was a proposal to have a profile where tools to be used were negotiated between coder and decoder. This concept is known from H.263. Evidence on its usefulness was not provided at the 99^th or 100^th meeting.
A discussion on levels took place. The proposal to define levels depending on consumer of business applications was agreed upon in order to allow for the difference between distribution quality and contribution quality among others.
There was also a discussion to create a profile for I-frames only given that HEVC-Intra appears to be about 30% better than JPEG-XR. Further discussion is needed on this topic.
In general, MPEG needs to be careful when defining conformance points which are given by a profile and level combination. It appears that AVC with 21 profiles and17 levels defines more than 300 conformance points.
Scalable Extension The current work does not cover scalability aspects that are considered essential for the successful introduction of HEVC into the market. The group undertook major work to define the requirements on scalability for HEVC. The results are available as N12782 Draft use cases for the scalable enhancement of HEVC, N12783 Draft requirements for the scalable enhancement of HEVC, and N12784 Draft Call for Proposals on the Scalable Video Coding Extensions of HEVC. The CfP planned for 7/2012 will focus on temporal and spatial scalability in random access applications. PSNR scalability is optional. As baseline for the scalable extension, MPEG foresees AVC as well as HEVC. Results are expected for the 102^nd meeting.
The discussion continues in N12776 AHG on Study of HEVC Extension.
3D video coding technology for HEVC is already under development. Hence, it will not be called for in the context of this extension. PDAM for HEVC 3D is planned for 1/2013 with DAM available in 7/2013.

2.