JPEG Column: 88th JPEG Meeting

The 88th JPEG meeting initially planned to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, was held online because of the Covid-19 outbreak.

JPEG experts organised a large number of sessions spread over day and night to allow the remote participation of multiple time zones. A very intense activity has resulted in multiple outputs and initiatives. In particular two new explorations activities were initiated. The first explores possible standardisation needs to address the growing emergence of fake media by introducing appropriate security features to prevent the misuse of media content. The latest, considers the use of DNA for media content archival.

Furthermore, JPEG has started the work on the new part 8 of the JPEG Systems standard, called JPEG snack, for interoperable rich image experiences, and it is holding two Call for Evidence, JPEG AI and JPEG Pleno Point cloud coding.

Despite travel restrictions, JPEG Committee has managed to keep up with the majority of its plans, defined prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. An overview of the different activities is represented in Fig. 1.

The 88^th JPEG meeting had the following highlights:

• JPEG explores standardization needs to address fake media
• JPEG Pleno Point Cloud call for evidence
• JPEG DNA – based archival of media content using DNA
• JPEG AI call for evidence
• JPEG XL standard evolves to a final specification
• JPEG Systems part 8, named JPEG Snack progress
• JPEG XS Part-1 2nd Edition first ballot.

JPEG explores standardization needs to address fake media

Recent advances in media manipulation, particularly deep learning-based approaches, can produce near realistic media content that is almost indistinguishable from authentic content to the human eye. These developments open opportunities for production of new types of media contents that are useful for the entertainment industry and other business usage, e.g., creation of special effects or artificial natural scene production with actors in the studio. However, this also leads to issues relating to fake media generation undermining the integrity of the media (e.g., deepfakes), copyright infringements and defamation to mention a few examples. Misuse of manipulated media can cause social unrest, spread rumours for political gain or encourage hate crimes. In this context, the term ‘fake’ is used here to refer to any manipulated media, independently of its ‘good’ or ‘bad’ intention.

In many application domains, fake media producers may want or may be required to declare the type of manipulations performed, in opposition to other situations where the intention is to ‘hide’ the mere existence of such manipulations. This is already leading various Governmental organizations to plan new legislation or companies (especially social media platforms or news outlets) to develop mechanisms that would clearly detect and annotate manipulated media contents when they are shared. While growing efforts are noticeable in developing technologies, there is a need to have a standard for the media/metadata format, e.g., a JPEG standard that facilitates a secure and reliable annotation of fake media, both in good faith and malicious usage scenarios. To better understand the fake media ecosystem and needs in terms of standardization, the JPEG Committee has initiated an in-depth analysis of fake media use cases, naturally independently of the “intentions”.     

More information on the initiative is available on the JPEG website. Interested parties are invited to join the above AHG through the following URL: http://listregistration.jpeg.org.

JPEG Pleno Point Cloud

JPEG Pleno is working towards the integration of various modalities of plenoptic content under a single and seamless framework. Efficient and powerful point cloud representation is a key feature within this vision. Point cloud data supports a wide range of applications including computer-aided manufacturing, entertainment, cultural heritage preservation, scientific research and advanced sensing and analysis. During the 88th JPEG meeting, the JPEG Committee released a Final Call for Evidence on JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Coding that focuses specifically on point cloud coding solutions supporting scalability and random access of decoded point clouds. Between the 88th and 89th meetings, the JPEG Committee will be actively promoting this activity and collecting registrations to participate in the Call for Evidence.

JPEG DNA

In digital media information, notably images, the relevant representation symbols, e.g. quantized DCT coefficients, are expressed in bits (i.e., binary units) but they could be expressed in any other units, for example the DNA units which follow a 4-ary representation basis. This would mean that DNA molecules may be created with a specific DNA units’ configuration which stores some media representation symbols, e.g. the symbols of a JPEG image, thus leading to DNA-based media storage as a form of molecular data storage. JPEG standards have been used in storage and archival of digital pictures as well as moving images. While the legacy JPEG format is widely used for photo storage in SD cards, as well as archival of pictures by consumers,  JPEG 2000 as described in ISO/IEC 15444 is used in many archival applications, notably for preservation of cultural heritage in form of visual data as pictures and video in digital format. This puts the JPEG Committee in a unique position to address the challenges in DNA-based storage by creating a standard image representation and coding for such applications. To explore the latter, an AHG has been established. Interested parties are invited to join the above AHG through the following URL: http://listregistration.jpeg.org.

JPEG AI

At the 88th meeting, the submissions to the Call for Evidence were reported and analysed. Six submissions were received in response to the Call for Evidence made in coordination with the IEEE MMSP 2020 Challenge. The submissions along with the anchors were already evaluated using objective quality metrics. Following this initial process, subjective experiments have been designed to compare the performance of all submissions. Thus, during this meeting, the main focus of JPEG AI was on the presentation and discussion of the objective performance evaluation of all submissions as well as the definition of the methodology for the subjective evaluation that will be made next.

JPEG XL

The standardization of the JPEG XL image coding system is nearing completion. Final technical comments by national bodies have been received for the codestream (Part 1); the DIS has been approved and an FDIS text is under preparation. The container file format (Part 2) is progressing to the DIS stage. A white paper summarizing key features of JPEG XL is available at http://ds.jpeg.org/whitepapers/jpeg-xl-whitepaper.pdf.

JPEG Systems

ISO/IEC has approved the JPEG Snack initiative to deliver interoperable rich image experiences.  As a result, the JPEG Systems Part 8 (ISO/IEC 19566-8) has been created to define the file format construction and the metadata signalling and descriptions which enable animation with transition effects.  A Call for Participation and updated use cases and requirements have been issued. The CfP and the use cases and requirements documents are available at http://ds.jpeg.org/documents/wg1n87035-REQ-JPEG_Snack_Use_Cases_and_Requirements_v2_2.pdf and http://ds.jpeg.org/documents/wg1n88032-SI-CfP_JPEG_Snack.pdf respectively.

An updated working draft for the JLINK initiative was completed.  Interest parties are encouraged to review the JLINK Working Draft 3.0 available at http://ds.jpeg.org/documents/wg1n88031-SI-JLINK_WD_3_0.pdf

JPEG XS

The JPEG committee is pleased to announce a significant step in the standardization of an efficient Bayer image compression scheme, with the first ballot of the 2nd Edition of JPEG XS Part-1.

The new edition of this visually lossless low-latency and lightweight compression scheme now includes image sensor coding tools allowing efficient compression of Color-Filtered Array (CFA) data. This compression enables better quality and lower complexity than the corresponding compression in the RGB domain.  It can be used as a mezzanine codec in various markets such as real-time video storage in and outside of cameras, and data compression onboard autonomous cars.

Final Quote

“Fake Media has become a challenge with the wide-spread manipulated contents in the news. JPEG is determined to mitigate this problem by providing standards that can securely identify manipulated contents.” said Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi, the Convenor of the JPEG Committee.

Future JPEG meetings are planned as follows:

• No 89, will be held online from October 5 to 9, 2020.