In February 20204 was held the first edition of the Social Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Multimedia (SoRAIM) Winter School, which, with the support of SIGMM attracted more than 50 students and young researchers to learn, discuss and first-hand experiment in topics related to social robotics. The event’s success calls for further editions in upcoming years.
Rationale for SoRAIM
SPRING, a collaborative research project funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, is coming to an end in May 2024. Its scientific and technological objectives were to test a versatile social robotic platform within a hospital and have it perform social activities in a multi-person, dynamic setup are in most part achieved. In order to empower the next generation of young researchers with concepts and tools to answer tomorrow’s challenges in the field of social robotics, one must tackle the issue of knowledge and know-how transmission. We therefore chose to provide a winter school, free of charge to the participants (thanks to the additional support of SIGMM), so that as many students and young researchers from various horizons (not only technical fields) could attend.
Contents of the Winter School
The Social Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Multimedia (SoRAIM) Winter School took place from 19 to 23 February 2024 in Grenoble, France. An introduction to the contents of the school and the context provided by the SPRING project was provided, and a demonstration combining social navigation and dialogue interaction was given on the first day. This triggered the curiosity of the participants, and a spontaneous Q&A session with the contributions, questions and comments from the participants to the school was held.
The school spanned over the entire week, with 17 talks, 8 speakers from the H2020 SPRING project, and 9 invited speakers external to the project. The school also included a panel discussion on the topic “Are social robots already out there? Immediate challenges in real-world deployment”, a poster session with 15 contributions, and two hands-on sessions where the participants could choose among the following topics: Robot navigation with Reinforcement Learning, ROS4HRI: How to represent and reason about humans with ROS, Building a conversational system with LLMs using prompt engineering, Robot self-localisation based on camera images, and Speaker extraction from microphone recordings. A social activity (visit of Grenoble’s downtown and Bastille) was organised on Thursday afternoon, allowing participants to mingle with speakers and to discover the host town’s history.
One of the highlights of SoRAIM was its Panel Session, which topic was “Are social robots already out there? Immediate challenges in real-world deployment”. Although no definitive answers were found, the session stressed the fact that challenges remain numerous for the deployment of actual social robots in our everyday lives (at work, at home). On the technical side, because robotic platforms are subject to certain hardware and software constraints. On the hardware side, because sensors and actuators are restricted in size, power and performance, since the physical space and the battery capacity are also limited. On the software side, because large models can be used if lots of computing resources are permanently available, which is not always the case, since they need to be shared between the various computing modules. Finally on the regulatory and legal side, because the rise of AI use is fast and needs to be balanced with ethical views that address our society’s needs; but the construction of proper laws, norms and their acknowledgement and understanding by stakeholders is slow. In this session the panellists surveyed all aspects of the problems at hand and provided an overview of the challenges that future scientists will need to solve in order to take social robots out of the labs and into the world.
Attendance & future perspectives
SoRAIM attracted 57 participants through the whole week. The attendees were diverse, as was aimed initially, with a breakdown of 50% of PhD students, 20% of young researchers (public sector), 10% of engineers and young researchers (private sector), and 20% of MSc students. Of particular focus, the ratio of women attendees was close to 40%, which is double of the usual in this field. Finally, in terms of geographic spread, attendees came in majority from other European countries (17 countries total), with just below 50% attendees coming from France. Following the school, a satisfaction survey was sent to the attendees in order to better grasp which elements were the most appreciated in view of a longer-term objective to hold this winter school as a serial event. Given the diverse background of attendees, opinions on contents such as the hands-on session varied, but overall satisfaction was very high, which shows the interest of the next generation of researchers for more opportunities to learn in this field. We are currently reviewing options to held similar events each year or every two years, depending on available funding.
More information about the SoRAIM winter school is available on the webpage: https://spring-h2020.eu
Sponsors
SoRAIM was sponsored by the H2020 SPRING project, Inria, the University Grenoble Alpes, the Multidisciplinary Institute of Artificial Intelligence and by ACM’s Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM). Through ACM SIGMM, we received significant funding which allowed us to invite 14 students and young researchers, members of SIGMM, from abroad.
Overall description of the software architecture used in the SPRING project, by Dr. Séverin lemaignan (https://academia.skadge.org/, PAL Robotics).
Autonomous Robots in the Wild – Adapting From and for Interaction, by Prof. Marc Hanheide (https://www.hanheide.net/, University of Lincoln).
AI and Children’s Rights: Lessons Learnt from the Implementation of the UNICEF Policy Guidance to Social Robots for Children, by Dr. Vasiliky Charisi (https://vickycharisi.wordpress.com/about/, University College London).
Opportunities and Challenges in Putting AI Ethics in Practice: the Role of the EU, by Dr. Mihalis Kritikos (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihalis-kritikos-43243087/, Ethics and Integrity Sector of the European Commission).
Robust Audio-Visual Perception of Humans, by Prof. Sharon Gannot (https://sharongannot.group/, bar-ilan university).
Predictive modelling of turn-taking in human-robot interaction, by Prof. Gabriel Skantze (https://www.kth.se/profile/skantze, KTH, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan).
Multi-User Spoken Conversations with Robots, by Dr. Daniel Hernandez Garcia (https://dhgarcia.github.io/, Heriot Watt University).
Learning Robot Behaviour, by Dr. Chris Reinke (https://www.scirei.net/, Inria at Univ. Grenoble Alpes).
Human-Interactive Mobile Robots: from Learning to Deployment, by Prof. Xuesu Xiao (https://cs.gmu.edu/~xiao/, George Mason University).
Human-Presence Modeling and Social Navigation of an Assistive Robot Solution for Detection of Falls and Elderly’s Support, by Prof. Antonios Gasteratos (https://robotics.pme.duth.gr/antonis/, Democritus University of Thrace).
Robotic Coaches for Mental Wellbeing: From the Lab to the Real World, by Prof. Hatice Gunes (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~hg410/, University of Cambridge)
JPEG
Trust reaches Committee Draft stage at the 101st JPEG meeting
The 101st JPEG meeting was held online, from the 30th of October to the 3rd of November 2023. At this meeting, JPEG Trust became a Committee Draft. In addition, JPEG analyzed the responses to its Calls for Proposals for JPEG DNA.
The 101st JPEG meeting had the following highlights:
JPEG Trust reaches Committee Draft;
JPEG AI request its re-establishment;
JPEG Pleno Learning-based Point Cloud coding establishes a new Verification Model;
JPEG Pleno organizes a Light Field Industry Workshop;
JPEG AIC-3 continues the evaluation of contributions;
JPEG XE produces a first draft of the Common Test Conditions;
JPEG DNA analyses the responses to the Call for Proposals;
JPEG XS proceeds with the development of the 3rd edition;
JPEG XL proceeds with the development of the 2nd edition.
The following sections summarize the main highlights of the 101st JPEG meeting.
JPEG Trust
The
101st meeting marked an important milestone for JPEG Trust project with
its Committee Draft (CD) for Part 1 “Core Foundation” (21617-1) of the standard
approved for consultation. It is expected that a Draft International Standard
(DIS) of the Core Foundation will be approved at the 102nd JPEG
meeting in January 2024, which will be another important milestone. This rapid
schedule is necessitated by the speed at which fake media and misinformation are
proliferating especially in respect of generative AI.
Aligned
with JPEG Trust, the NFT Call for Proposals (CfP) has yielded two expressions
of interest to date, and submission of proposals is still open till the 15th of
January 2024.
Additionally,
the Use Cases and Requirements document for JPEG Fake Media (the JPEG Fake
Media exploration preceded the initiation of the JPEG Trust international
standard) was updated to reflect the change to JPEG Trust as well as
incorporate additional use cases that have arisen since the previous JPEG meeting,
namely in respect of composited images. This document is publicly available on
the JPEG website.
JPEG AI
At
the 101st meeting, the JPEG Committee issued a request for
re-establishing the JPEG AI (6048-1) project, along with a Committee Draft (CD)
of its version 1. A new JPEG AI timeline has also been approved and is now
publicly available, where a Draft International Standard (DIS) of the Core
Coding Engine of JPEG AI version 1 is foreseen at the 103rd JPEG
meeting (April 2024), a rather important milestone for JPEG AI. The JPEG
Committee also established that JPEG AI version 2 will address requirements not
yet fulfilled (especially regarding machine consumption tasks) but also
significant improvements on requirements already addressed in version 1, e.g.
compression efficiency. JPEG AI version 2 will issue the final Call for
Proposals in January 2025 and the presentation and evaluation of JPEG AI
version 2 proposals will occur in July 2025. During 2023, the JPEG AI
Verification Model (VM) has evolved from a complex system (800kMAC/pxl) to two
acceptable complexity-efficiency operation points, providing 11% compression
efficiency gains at 20 kMAC/pxl and 25% compression efficiency gains at 200
kMAC/pxl. The decoder for the lower-end operating point has now been implemented
on mobile devices and demonstrated during the 100th and 101st
JPEG meetings. A presentation with the JPEG AI architecture, networks, and
tools is now publicly available. To avoid project delays in the future, the
promising input contributions from the 101st meeting will be
combined in JPEG AI Core Experiment 6.1 (CE6.1) to study interaction and
resolve potential issues during the next meeting cycle. After this integration,
a model will be trained and cross-checked to be approved for release (JPEG AI
VM5 release candidate) along with the study DIS text. Among promising
technologies included in CE6.1 are high quality and variable rate improvements,
with a smaller number of models (from 5 to 4), a multi-branch decoder that
allows up to three reconstructions with different levels of quality from the
same latent representation, but with synthesis transform networks with
different complexity along with several post-filter and arithmetic coder
simplifications.
JPEG Pleno Learning-based Point Cloud coding
The
JPEG Pleno Learning-based Point Cloud coding activity progressed at the 101st
meeting with a major investigation into point cloud quality metrics. The JPEG
Committee decided to continue this investigation into point cloud quality
metrics as well as explore possible advancements to the VM in the areas of
parameter tuning and support for residual lossless coding. The JPEG Committee is
targeting a release of the Committee Draft of Part 6 of the JPEG Pleno standard
relating to Learning-based point cloud coding at the 102nd JPEG
meeting in San Francisco, USA in January 2024.
JPEG Pleno Light Field
The
JPEG Committee has been creating several standards to provision the dynamic
demands of the market, with its royalty-free patent licensing commitments. A
light field coding standard has recently been developed, and JPEG Pleno is
constantly exploring novel light field coding architectures.
The
JPEG Committee is also preparing standardization activities – among others – in
the domains of objective and subjective quality assessment for light fields,
improved light field coding modes, and learning-based light field coding.
A
Light Field Industry Workshop takes place on November 22nd, 2023,
aiming at providing a forum for industrial actors to exchange information on
their needs and expectations with respect to standardization activities in this
domain.
JPEG AIC
During
the 101st JPEG meeting, the AIC activity continued its efforts on
the evaluation of the contributions received in April 2023 in response to the
Call for Contributions on Subjective Image Quality Assessment. Notably, the
activity is currently investigating three different subjective image quality
assessment methodologies. The results of the newly established Core Experiments
will be considered during the design of the AIC-3 standard, which has been
carried out in a collaborative way since its beginning.
The AIC
activity also initiated the discussion on Part 4 of the standard on Objective
Image Quality Metrics (AIC-4) by refining the Use Cases and Requirements
document. During the 102nd JPEG meeting in January 2024, the
activity is planning to work on the Draft Call for Proposals on Objective Image
JPEG XE
The
JPEG Committee continued its activity on Event-based Vision. This activity
revolves around a new and emerging image modality created by event-based visual
sensors. JPEG XE aims at the creation and development of a standard to
represent events in an efficient way allowing interoperability between sensing,
storage, and processing, targeting machine vision and other relevant
applications. For better dissemination and raising external interest, a
workshop around Event-based Vision was organized and took place on Oct 24th,
2023. The workshop triggered the attention of various stakeholders in the field
of Event-based Vision, who will start contributing to JPEG XE. The workshop
proceedings will be made available on jpeg.org. In addition, the JPEG Committee
created a minor revision for the Use cases and Requirements as v1.0, adding an
extra use case on scientific and engineering measurements. Finally, a first
draft of the Common Test Conditions for JPEG XE was produced, along with the
first Exploration Experiments to start practical experiments in the coming
3-month period until the next JPEG meeting. The public Ad-hoc Group on
Event-based Vision was re-established to continue the work towards the next 102nd
JPEG meeting in January of 2024. To stay informed about the activities please
join the Event-based Vision Ad-hoc Group mailing list.
JPEG DNA
As a result of the Call for Proposals issued by the JPEG Committee for
contributions to JPEG DNA standard, 5 proposals were submitted under three
distinct codecs by three organizations. Two codecs were submitted to both
coding and transcoding categories, and one was submitted to the coding category
only. All proposals showed improved compression efficiency when compared to
three selected anchors by the JPEG Committee. After a rigorous analysis of the
proposals and their cross checking by independent parties, it was decided to
create a first Verification Model (VM) based on V-DNA, the best performing
proposal. In addition, a number of core experiments were designed to improve
the JPEG DNA VM with elements from other proposals submitted by quantifying
their added value when integrated in the VM.
JPEG XS
The
JPEG Committee continued its work on JPEG XS 3rd edition. The
primary goal of the 3rd edition is to deliver the same image quality
as the 2nd edition, but with half of the required bandwidth. The
Final Draft International Standard for Part 1 of the standard — Core coding
tools — was produced at this meeting. With this FDIS version, all technical
features are now fixed and completed. Part 2 — Profiles and buffer models —
and Part 3 — Transport and container formats — of the standard are still in
DIS ballot, and ballot results will only be known by the end of January 2024.
The JPEG Committee is now working on Part 4 — Conformance testing, to provide
the necessary test streams of the 3rd edition for potential
implementors. A first Working Draft for Part 4 was issued. Completion of the
JPEG XS 3rd edition is scheduled for April 2024 (Parts 1, 2, and 3)
and Parts 4 and 5 will follow shortly after that. Finally, the new Use cases
and Requirements for JPEG XS document was created containing a new use case to
use JPEG XS for transport of 4K/8K video over 5G mobile networks. It is
expected that the new use case can already be covered by the 3rd edition,
meaning that no further updates to the standard would be needed. However, more
investigations and experimentations will be conducted on this subject.
JPEG XL
The second editions of JPEG
XL Part 1 (Core coding system) and Part 2 (File format) have proceeded to the
FDIS stage, and the second edition of JPEG XL Part 3 (Conformance testing) has
proceeded to the CD stage. These second editions provide clarifications,
corrections and editorial improvements that will facilitate independent
implementations. At the same time, the development of hardware implementation solutions
continues.
Final Quote
“The release of the first Committee Draft of JPEG Trust is a strong signal that the JPEG Committee is reacting with a timely response to demands for solutions that inform users when digital media assets are created or modified, in particular through Generative AI, hence contributing to bringing back trust into media-centric ecosystems.” said Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi, the Convenor of the JPEG Committee.
The 145th MPEG meeting was held online from 22-26 January 2024, and the official press release can be found here. It comprises the following highlights:
Latest Edition of the High Efficiency Image Format Standard Unveils Cutting-Edge Features for Enhanced Image Decoding and Annotation
MPEG Systems finalizes Standards supporting Interoperability Testing
MPEG finalizes the Third Edition of MPEG-D Dynamic Range Control
MPEG finalizes the Second Edition of MPEG-4 Audio Conformance
MPEG Genomic Coding extended to support Transport and File Format for Genomic Annotations
MPEG White Paper: Neural Network Coding (NNC) – Efficient Storage and Inference of Neural Networks for Multimedia Applications
This column will focus on the High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) and interoperability testing. As usual, a brief update on MPEG-DASH et al. will be provided.
High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF)
The High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) is a widely adopted standard in the imaging industry that continues to grow in popularity. At the 145th MPEG meeting, MPEG Systems (WG 3) ratified its third edition, which introduces exciting new features, such as progressive decoding capabilities that enhance image quality through a sequential, single-decoder instance process. With this enhancement, users can decode bitstreams in successive steps, with each phase delivering perceptible improvements in image quality compared to the preceding step. Additionally, the new edition introduces a sophisticated data structure that describes the spatial configuration of the camera and outlines the unique characteristics responsible for generating the image content. The update also includes innovative tools for annotating specific areas in diverse shapes, adding a layer of creativity and customization to image content manipulation. These annotation features cater to the diverse needs of users across various industries.
Research aspects: Progressive coding has been a part of modern image coding formats for some time now. However, the inclusion of supplementary metadata provides an opportunity to explore new use cases that can benefit both user experience (UX) and quality of experience (QoE) in academic settings.
Interoperability Testing
MPEG standards typically comprise format definitions (or specifications) to enable interoperability among products and services from different vendors. Interestingly, MPEG goes beyond these format specifications and provides reference software and conformance bitstreams, allowing conformance testing.
At the 145th MPEG meeting, MPEG Systems (WG 3) finalized two standards comprising conformance and reference software by promoting it to the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS), the final stage of standards development. The finalized standards, ISO/IEC 23090-24 and ISO/IEC 23090-25, showcase the pinnacle of conformance and reference software for scene description and visual volumetric video-based coding data, respectively.
ISO/IEC 23090-24 focuses on conformance and reference software for
scene description, providing a comprehensive reference implementation and
bitstream tailored for conformance testing related to ISO/IEC 23090-14, scene
description. This standard opens new avenues for advancements in scene
depiction technologies, setting a new standard for conformance and software
reference in this domain.
Similarly, ISO/IEC 23090-25 targets conformance and reference software for the carriage of visual volumetric video-based coding data. With a dedicated reference implementation and bitstream, this standard is poised to elevate the conformance testing standards for ISO/IEC 23090-10, the carriage of visual volumetric video-based coding data. The introduction of this standard is expected to have a transformative impact on the visualization of volumetric video data.
At the same 145th MPEG meeting, MPEG Audio Coding (WG6) celebrated the completion of the second edition of ISO/IEC 14496-26, audio conformance, elevating it to the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage. This significant update incorporates seven corrigenda and five amendments into the initial edition, originally published in 2010.
ISO/IEC 14496-26 serves as a pivotal standard, providing a framework for designing tests to ensure the compliance of compressed data and decoders with the requirements outlined in ISO/IEC 14496-3 (MPEG-4 Audio). The second edition reflects an evolution of the original, addressing key updates and enhancements through diligent amendments and corrigenda. This latest edition, now at the FDIS stage, marks a notable stride in MPEG Audio Coding’s commitment to refining audio conformance standards and ensuring the seamless integration of compressed data within the MPEG-4 Audio framework.
These standards will be made freely accessible for download on the official ISO website, ensuring widespread availability for industry professionals, researchers, and enthusiasts alike.
Research aspects: Reference software and conformance bitstreams often serve as the basis for further research (and development) activities and, thus, are highly appreciated. For example, reference software of video coding formats (e.g., HM for HEVC, VM for VVC) can be used as a baseline when improving coding efficiency or other aspects of the coding format.
MPEG-DASH Updates
The current status of MPEG-DASH is shown in the figure below.
MPEG-DASH Status, January 2024.
The following most notable aspects have been discussed at the 145th MPEG meeting and adopted into ISO/IEC 23009-1, which will eventually become the 6th edition of the MPEG-DASH standard:
It is now possible to pass CMCD parameters sid and cid via the MPD URL.
Segment duration patterns can be signaled using SegmentTimeline.
Definition of a background mode of operation, which allows a DASH player to receive MPD updates and listen to events without possibly decrypting or rendering any media.
Additionally, the technologies under consideration (TuC) document has been updated with means to signal maximum segment rate, extend copyright license signaling, and improve haptics signaling in DASH. Finally, REAP is progressing towards FDIS but not yet there and most details will be discussed in the upcoming AhG period.
The 146th MPEG meeting will be held in Rennes, France, from April 22-26, 2024. Click here for more information about MPEG meetings and their developments.
About our initiatives for the Multimedia community
Dear SIGMM members, colleagues, students,
The world is changing rapidly, and technology is driving these changes at an unprecedented pace. In this scenario, multimedia has become ubiquitous, providing new services to users, advanced modalities for information transmission, processing, and management, as well as innovative solutions for digital content understanding and production. The progress of Artificial Intelligence has fueled new opportunities and vitality in the field. New media formats, such as 3D, event data, and other sensory inputs, have become popular. Cutting-edge applications are constantly being developed and introduced.
We believed that these changes should be reflected in our SIGMM flagship conference, ACM Multimedia and the SIGMM organization and activities overall. This belief led us to organize the SIGMM Retreat in coincidence with ACM MM23 in Ottawa on October 30, 2023. The goal of the meeting was opening a discussion on key strategic issues such as the coverage of ACM Multimedia, its quality and reputation and how we can grow the SIGMM community. We invited the members of the SIGMM Advisory Committee, the members of the Steering Committees of the SIGMM-sponsored conferences, the ACM TOMM Editor in Chief, the past SIGMM Chairs, and senior personalities and emerging researchers of our community. The Retreat was well attended. Twenty people attended in-person. Ten attended on-line. Alberto Del Bimbo, SIGMM Chair, chaired the Retreat with the assistance of Phoebe Chen, SIGMM Vice-chair and Xavier Alameda Pineda.
The discussion was vibrant and valued opinions and suggestions emerged. It was widely agreed that the distinctive feature of multimedia research is the combination and integration of various modalities to build end-to-end systems.
People agreed on the need to introduce significant changes in the format of our flagship conference to bring new attractiveness. High consensus received the ideas of giving more room to Brave New Ideas sections, having TED-like talks, and soliciting workshops on innovative topics and striving for their continuity. There was also consensus on revitalizing the program by including new emerging topics like Foundation Models, 3D, glass free interactivity, new networking platforms. All the attendees recognized the need to balance the traditional research areas of the ACM Multimedia program.
There was general agreement on using Open Access as the reviewing system for ACM Multimedia. It was recognized it improves the quality and transparency of the reviewing process, enhances respectability, empowers the reviewers to conduct serious reviews, and aligns ACM Multimedia to the top ranked conferences.
Other important topics of discussion included how to incentivize in-person attendance and discourage online participation to maximize the value of conferences, the collaboration and synchronization of SIGMM-sponsored conferences, and the need to make the transition between conference editions more seamless.
Recognizing the need for greater industry presence, also to offer internship opportunities for students and improve the attendance of younger generations, was identified as a key issue for improvement. All the attendees recognized the importance to exploit SIGMM Records and Social Media as a means to improve the sense of community and disseminate information.
Following our commitment to align words with actions, we decided to create Strike Teams focusing on the most strategic themes. These teams are composed of a few experienced colleagues who volunteered to define realistic strategies for the key issues, determine concrete actions, and help to implement them in the near future. Starting in January 2024, four strike teams are in operation, with members appointed for two years:
SIGMM Strike Team on Open Review to provide operational support on the implementation of Open Review, smoothly transferring the best practices and helping to provide new functions. Team members are: Xavier Alameda Pineda (Univ. Grenoble-Alpes) Coordinator, Marco Bertini (Univ. Firenze).
SIGMM Strike Team on Harmonization and Spread to integrate SIGMM Records and Social Media in the whole process of the ACM Multimedia organization, improve synchronization and harmonization between ACM Multimedia and other SIGMM Conferences, and strengthen the sense of community. Team members are: Miriam Redi (Wikimedia Foundation) Coordinator, Silvia Rossi (CWI), Irene Viola (CWI), Mylene Farias (Texas State Univ. and Univ. Brasilia), Ichiro Ide (Nagoya Univ), Pablo Cesar (CWI and TU Delft).
SIGMM Strike Team on Industry Engagement to improve the presence of industry at ACM Multimedia, launching new in-cooperation initiatives and establishing stable bi-directional links. Team members are: Touradj Ebrahimi (EPFL) Coordinator, Ali Begen (Ozyegin Univ), Balu Adsumilli (Google), Yong Rui (Lenovo) and ChangSheng Xu (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Strike Teamon ACMMM Format to innovate the ACM Multimedia program, aligning it with technological advancements and the emergence of new research areas, and igniting fresh and efficient means of disseminating research. Team members are: Arnold Smeulders (Univ. of Amsterdam) Coordinator, Alan Smeaton (Dublin City University), Tat Seng Chua (National University of Singapore), Changwen Chen (Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ.), Nicu Sebe (Univ. of Trento), Marcel Worring (Univ. of Amsterdam) and the Chairs of the next two ACMMM Conferences, Jianfei Cai (Monash Univ.) and Cathal Gurrin (Dublin City Univ.).
All the teams report to SIGMM Chair and the SIGMM Executive Committee and will work in close connection with the General Chairs and Program Chairs of the next ACM Multimedia editions.
I take this opportunity to thank again all those who participated in the SIGMM Retreat, and especially those who are committed to the Strike Teams. I sincerely hope that their work brings new ideas and vitality to our community and strengthens its visibility and reputation in the international scientific arena in the years to come.
Immersive experiences have the potential of redefining traditional forms of media engagement by intricately combining reality with imagination. Motivated by necessities, current developments and emerging technologies, this column sets out to bridge immersive experiences in both digital and physical realities. Fitting under the umbrella term of eXtended Reality (XR), the first section describes various realizations of blending digital and physical elements to design what we refer to as immersive digiphysical experiences. We further highlight industry and research initiatives related to driving the design and development of such experiences, considered to be key building-blocks of the futuristic ‘metaverse’. The second section outlines challenges related to assessing, modeling, and managing the Quality of Experience (QoE) of immersive digiphysical experiences and reflects upon ongoing work in the area. While potential use cases span a wide range of application domains, the third section elaborates on the specific case of conference organization, which has over the past few years spanned from fully physical, to fully virtual, and finally to attempts at hybrid organization. We believe this use case provides valuable insights into needs and promising approaches, to be demonstrated and experienced at the upcoming 16th edition of the International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2024) in Karlshamn, Sweden in June 2024.
Multiple users engaged in a co-located mixed reality experience
Bridging The Digital And Physical Worlds
According to [IMeX WP, 2020], immersive media have been described as involving “multi-modal human-computer interaction where either a user is immersed inside a digital/virtual space or digital/virtual artifacts become a part of the physical world”. Spanning the so-called virtuality continuum [Milgram, 1995], immersive media experiences may involve various realizations of bridging the digital and physical worlds, such as the seamless integration of digital content with the real world (via Augmented or Mixed Reality, AR/MR), and vice versa by incorporating real objects into a virtual environment (Augmented Virtuality, AV). More recently, the term eXtended Reality (XR) (also sometimes referred to as xReality) has been used as an umbrella term for a wide range of levels of “realities”, with [Rauschnabel, 2022] proposing a distinction between AR/MR and Virtual Reality (VR) based on whether the physical environment is, at least visually, part of the user’s experience.
By seamlessly merging digital and physical elements and supporting real-time user engagement with both digital and physical components, immersive digiphysical (i.e., both digitally and physically accessible [Westerlund, 2020]) experiences have the potential of providing compelling experiences blurring the distinction between the real and virtual worlds. A key aspect is that of digital elements responding to user input or the physical environment, and the physical environment responding to interactions with digital objects. Going beyond only visual or auditory stimuli, the incorporation of additional senses, for example via haptic feedback or olfactory elements, can contribute to multisensory engagement [Gibbs, 2022].
The rapid development of XR technologies has been recognized as a key contributor to realizing a wide range of applications built on the fusion of the digital and physical worlds [NEM WP, 2022]. In its contribution to the European XR Coalition (launched by the European Commission), the New European Media Initiative (NEM), Europe’s Technology Platform of Horizon 2020 dedicated to driving the future of digital experiences, calls for needed actions from both industry and research perspectives addressing challenges related to social and human centered XR as well as XR communication aspects [NEM XR, 2022]. One such initiative is the Horizon 2020 TRANSMIXR project [TRANSMIXR], aimed at developing a distributed XR creation environment that supports remote collaboration practices, as well as an XR media experience environment for the delivery and consumption of social immersive media experiences. The NEM initiative further identifies the need for scalable solutions to obtain plausible and convincing virtual copies of physical objects and environments, as well as solutions supporting seamless and convincing interaction between the physical and the virtual world. Among key technologies and infrastructures needed to overcome outlined challenges, the following are identified [NEM XR, 2022]: high bandwidth and low-latency energy-efficient networks; remote computing for processing and rendering deployed on cloud and edge infrastructures; tools for the creation and updating of digital twins (DT) to strengthen the link between the real and virtual worlds, integrating Internet of Things (IoT) platforms; hardware in the form of advanced displays; and various content creation tools relying on interoperable formats.
Merging the digital and physical worlds
Looking towards the future, immersive digiphysical experiences set the stage for visions of the metaverse [Wang, 2023], described as representing the evolution of the Internet towards a platform enabling immersive, persistent, and interconnected virtual environments blending digital and physical [Lee, 2021].[Wang, 2022] see the metaverse as `created by the convergence of physically persistent virtual space and virtually enhance physical reality’. The metaverse is further seen as a platform offering the potential to host real-time multisensory social interactions (e.g., involving sight, hearing, touch) between people communicating with each other in real-time via avatars [Hennig-Thurau, 2023]. As of 2022, the Metaverse Standards Forum is proving a venue for industry coordination fostering the development of interoperability standards for an open and inclusive metaverse [Metaverse, 2023]. Relevant existing standards include: ISO/IEC 23005 (MPEG-V) (standardization of interfaces between the real world and the virtual world, and among virtual worlds) [ISO/IEC 23055], IEEE 2888 (definition of standardized interfaces for synchronization of cyber and physical worlds) [IEEE 2888], and MPEG-I (standards to digitally represent immersive media) [ISO/IEC 23090].
Research Challenges For The Qoe Community
Achieving wide-spread adoption of XR-based services providing
digiphysical experiences across a broad range of application domains (e.g.,
education, industry & manufacturing, healthcare, engineering, etc.)
inherently requires ensuring intuitive, comfortable, and positive user
experiences. While research efforts in meeting such requirements are well under
way, a number of open challenges remain.
Quality of Experience (QoE) for immersive media has been defined as [IMeX WP, 2020] “the degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service which involves an immersive media experience. It results from the fulfillment of his or her expectations with respect to the utility and/or enjoyment of the application or service in the light of the user’s personality and current state.” Furthermore, a bridge between QoE and UX has been established through the concept of Quality of User Experience (QUX), combining hedonic, eudaimonic and pragmatic aspects of QoE and UX [Egger-Lampl, 2019]. In the context of immersive communication and collaboration services, significant efforts are being invested towards understanding and optimizing the end user experience [Perez, 2022].
The White Paper [IMeX WP, 2020] ties immersion to the digital media world (“The more the system blocks out stimuli from the physical world, the more the system is considered to be immersive.”). Nevertheless, immersion as such exists in physical contexts as well, e.g., when reading a captivating book. MR, XR and AV scenarios are digiphysical in their nature. These considerations pose several challenges:
Achieving intuitive and natural interactive experiences[Hennig-Thurau, 2023] when mixing realities.
Developing a common understanding of MR-, XR- and AV-related challenges in digiphysical multi-modal multi-party settings.
Advancing VR, AR, MR, XR and AV technologies to allow for truly digiphysical experiences.
Measuring and modeling QoE, UX and QUX for immersive digiphysical services, covering overall methodology, measurement instruments, modeling approaches, test environments and application domains.
Management of the networked infrastructure to support immersive digiphysical experiences with appropriate QoE, UX and QUX.
Sustainability considerations in terms of environmental footprint, accessibility, equality of opportunities in various parts of the world, and cost/benefit ratio.
Challenges 1 and 2 demand for an experience-based bottom-up approach to focus on the most important aspects. Examples include designing and evaluating different user representations [Aseeri, 2021][Viola, 2023], natural interaction techniques [Spittle, 2023] and use of different environments by participants (AR/MR/VR) [Moslavac, 2023]. The latter has shown beneficial for challenges 3 (cf. the emergence of MR-/XR-/AV-supporting head-mounted devices such as the Microsoft Hololens and recent pass-through versions of the Meta Quest) and 4. Finally, challenges 5 and 6 need to be carefully addressed to allow for long-term adoption and feasibility.
Challenges 1 to 4 have been addressed in standardization. For instance, ITU-T Recommendation P.1320 specifies QoE assessment procedures and metrics for the evaluation of XR telemeetings, outlining various categories of QoE influence factors and use cases [ITU-T Rec. P.1320, 2022] (adopted from the 3GPP technical report TR 26.928 on XR technology in 5G). The corresponding ITU-T Study Group 12 (Question 10) developed a taxonomy of telemeetings [ITU-T Rec. G.1092, 2023], providing a systematic classification of telemeeting systems. Ongoing joint efforts between the VQEG Immersive Media Group and ITU-T Study Group 12 are targeted towards specifying interactive test methods for subjective assessment of XR communications [ITU-T P.IXC, 2022].
The complexity of the aforementioned challenges demand for a combination of fundamental work, use cases, implementations, demonstrations, and testing. One specific use case that has shown its urge during recent years in combining digital and physical realities is that of hybrid conference organization, touching in particular on the challenge of achieving intuitive and natural interactions between remote and physically present participants. We consider this use case in detail in the following section, referring to the organization of the International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) as an example.
Immersive Communication And Collaboration: The Case Of Conference Organization
What seemed to be impossible and was undesirable in the past, became a necessity overnight during the CoVid-19 pandemic: running conferences as fully virtual events. Many research communities succeeded in adapting ongoing conference organizations such that communities could meet, present, demonstrate and socialize online. The conference QoMEX 2020 is one such example, whose organizers introduced a set of innovative instruments to mutually interact and enjoy, such as virtual Mozilla Hubs spaces for poster presentations and a music session with prerecorded contributions mixed to form a joint performance to be enjoyed virtually together. A yet unknown inventiveness was observed to make the best out of the heavily travel-restricted situation. Furthermore, the technical approaches varied from off-the-shelf systems (such as Zoom or Teams) to custom-built applications. However, the majority of meetings during CoVid times, no matter scale and nature, were run in unnatural 2D on-screen settings. The frequently reported phenomenon of videoconference (VC) fatigue can be attributed to a set of personal, organizational, technical and environmental factors [Döring, 2022]. Indeed, talking to one’s computer with many faces staring back, limited possibilities to move freely, technostress [Brod, 1984] and organizational mishaps made many people tired of VC technology that was designed for a better purpose, but could not get close enough to a natural real-life experience.
As CoVid was on its retreat, conferences again became physical events and communities enjoyed meeting again, e.g., at QoMEX 2022. However, voices were raised that asked for remote participation for various reasons, such as time or budget restrictions, environmental sustainability considerations, or simply the comfort of being able to work from home. With remote participation came the challenge of bridging between in-person and remote participants, i.e., turning conferences into hybrid events [Bajpai, 2022]. However, there are many mixed experiences from hybrid conferences, both with onsite and online participants: (1) The onsite participants suffer from interruptions of the session flow needed to fix problems with the online participation tool. Their readiness to devote effort, time, and money to participate in a future hybrid event in person might suffer from such issues, which in turn would weaken the corresponding communities; (2) The online participants suffer from similar issues, where sound irregularities (echo, excessive sound volumes, etc.) are felt to be particularly disturbing, along with feelings of being not properly included e.g., in Q&A-sessions and personal interactions. At both ends, clear signs of technostress and “us-and-them” feelings can be observed. Consequently, and despite good intentions and advice [Bajpai, 2022], any hybrid conference might miss its main purpose to bring researchers together to present, discuss and socialize. To avoid the above-listed issues, the post-CoVid QoMEX conferences (since 2022) avoided hybrid operations, with few exceptions.
A conference is a typical case that reveals difficulties in bringing the physical and digital worlds together [Westerlund, 2020], at least when relying upon state-of-the-art telemeeting approaches that have not explicitly been designed for hybrid and digiphysical operations. At the recent 26th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing in Minneapolis, USA (CSCW 2023), one of the panel sessions focused on “Realizing Values in Hybrid Environments”. Panelists and audience shared experiences about successes and failures with hybrid events. The main take-aways were as follows: (1) there is a general lack of know-how, no matter how much funds are allocated, and (2) there is a significant demand for research activities in the area.
Yet, there is hope, as increasingly many VR, MR, XR and AV-supporting devices and applications keep emerging, enabling new kinds and representations of immersive experiences. In a conference context, the latter implies the feeling of “being there”, i.e., being integrated in the conference community, no matter where the participant is located. This calls for new ways of interacting amongst others through various realities (VR/MR/XR), which need to be invented, tried and evaluated in order to offer new and meaningful experiences in telemeeting scenarios [Viola, 2023]. Indeed, CSCW 2023 hosted a specific workshop titled “Emerging Telepresence Technologies for Hybrid Meetings: an Interactive Workshop”, during which visions, experiences, and solutions were shared and could be experienced locally and remotely. About half of the participants were online, successfully interacting with participants onsite via various techniques.
With these challenges and opportunities in mind, the motto of QoMEX 2024 has been set as “Towards immersive digiphysical experiences.” While the conference is organized as an in-person event, a set of carefully selected hybrid activities will be offered to interested remote participants, such as (1) 360° stereoscopic streaming of the keynote speeches and demo sessions, and (2) the option to take part in so-called hybrid experience demos. The 360° stereoscopic streaming has so far been tested successfully in local, national and transatlantic sessions (during the above-mentioned CSCW workshop) with various settings, and further fine-tuning will be done and tested before the conference. With respect to the demo session – and in addition to traditional onsite demos – this year, the conference will in particular solicit hybrid experience demos that enable both onsite and remote participants to test the demo in an immersive environment. Facilities will also be provided for onsite participants to test demos from both the perspective of a local and remote user, enabling them to experience different roles. The organizers of QoMEX 2024 hope that the hybrid activities of QoMEX 2024 will trigger more research interest in these areas along and beyond the classical lines of QoE research (to perform quantitative subjective studies of QoE features and correlating them with QoE factors).
As immersive
experiences extend into both digital and physical worlds and realities, there
is a great space to conquer for QoE, UX, and QUX-related research. While the
recent CoVid pandemic has forced many users to replace physical with digital
meetings and sustainability considerations have reduced many peoples’ and
organizations’ readiness to (support) travel, shortcomings of hybrid
digiphysical meetings have failed to persuade their participants of their
superiority over pure online or on-site meetings. Indeed, one promising path
towards a successful integration of physical and digital worlds consists of
trying out, experiencing, reflecting, and deriving important research questions
for and beyond the QoE research community The upcoming conference QoMEX 2024
will be a stop along this road with carefully selected hybrid experiences aimed
at boosting research and best practice in the QoE domain towards immersive
digiphysical experiences.
References
[Aseeri, 2021] Aseeri, S., & Interrante, V. (2021). The Influence of Avatar Representation on Interpersonal Communication in Virtual Social Environments. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 27(5), 2608-2617.
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[Gibbs, 2022] Gibbs, J. K., Gillies, M., & Pan, X. (2022). A comparison of the effects of haptic and visual feedback on presence in virtual reality. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 157, 102717.
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[IMeX WP, 2020] Perkis, A., Timmerer, C., et al., “QUALINET White Paper on Definitions of Immersive Media Experience (IMEx)”, European Network on Quality of Experience in Multimedia Systems and Services, 14th QUALINET meeting (online), May 25, 2020. Online: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07032
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[ISO/IEC 23090] ISO/IEC 23090 (MPEG-I) standards, Coded representation of Immersive Media, https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-i, accessed January 21, 2024.
[IEEE 2888] IEEE 2888 standards, https://sagroups.ieee.org/2888/, accessed January 21, 2024.
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[ITU-T P.IXC, 2022] ITU-T Work Item: Interactive test methods for subjective assessment of extended reality communications, under study,” 2022.
[Lee, 2021] Lee, L. H. et al. (2021). All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda. arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05352.
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[Moslavac, 2023] Moslavac, M., Brzica, L., Drozd, L., Kušurin, N., Vlahović, S., & Skorin-Kapov, L. (2023, July). Assessment of Varied User Representations and XR Environments in Consumer-Grade XR Telemeetings. In 2023 17th International Conference on Telecommunications (ConTEL) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
[Rauschnabel, 2022] Rauschnabel, P. A., Felix, R., Hinsch, C., Shahab, H., & Alt, F. (2022). What is XR? Towards a Framework for Augmented and Virtual Reality. Computers in human behavior, 133, 107289.
[NEM WP, 2022] New European Media (NEM), NEM: List of topics for the Work Program 2023-2024.
[NEM XR, 2022] New European Media (NEM), NEM contribution to the XR coalition, June 2022.
[Perez, 2022] Pérez, P., Gonzalez-Sosa, E., Gutiérrez, J., & García, N. (2022). Emerging Immersive Communication Systems: Overview, Taxonomy, and Good Practices for QoE Assessment. Frontiers in Signal Processing, 2, 917684.
[Spittle, 2023] Spittle, B., Frutos-Pascual, M., Creed, C., & Williams, I. (2023). A Review of Interaction Techniques for Immersive Environments. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 29(9), Sept. 2023.
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The 144th MPEG meeting was held in Hannover, Germany! For those interested, the press release is available with all the details. It’s great to see progress being made in person (cf. also the group pictures below). The main outcome of this meeting is as follows:
MPEG issues Call for Learning-Based Video Codecs for Study of Quality Assessment
MPEG evaluates Call for Proposals on Feature Compression for Video Coding for Machines
MPEG progresses ISOBMFF-related Standards for the Carriage of Network Abstraction Layer Video Data
MPEG enhances the Support of Energy-Efficient Media Consumption
MPEG ratifies the Support of Temporal Scalability for Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression
MPEG reaches the First Milestone for the Interchange of 3D Graphics Formats
MPEG announces Completion of Coding of Genomic Annotations
We have modified the press release to cater to the readers of ACM SIGMM Records and highlighted research on video technologies. This edition of the MPEG column focuses on MPEG Systems-related standards and visual quality assessment. As usual, the column will end with an update on MPEG-DASH.
Attendees of the 144th MPEG meeting in Hannover, Germany.
Visual Quality Assessment
MPEG does not create standards in the visual quality assessment domain. However, it conducts visual quality assessments for its standards during various stages of the standardization process. For instance, it evaluates responses to call for proposals, conducts verification tests of its final standards, and so on. MPEG Visual Quality Assessment (AG 5) issued an open call to study quality assessment for learning-based video codecs. AG 5 has been conducting subjective quality evaluations for coded video content and studying their correlation with objective quality metrics. Most of these studies have focused on the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standards. To facilitate the study of visual quality, MPEG maintains the Compressed Video for the study of Quality Metrics (CVQM) dataset.
With the recent advancements in learning-based video compression algorithms, MPEG is now studying compression using these codecs. It is expected that reconstructed videos compressed using learning-based codecs will have different types of distortion compared to those induced by traditional block-based motion-compensated video coding designs. To gain a deeper understanding of these distortions and their impact on visual quality, MPEG has issued a public call related to learning-based video codecs. MPEG is open to inputs in response to the call and will invite responses that meet the call’s requirements to submit compressed bitstreams for further study of their subjective quality and potential inclusion into the CVQM dataset.
Considering the rapid advancements in the development of learning-based video compression algorithms, MPEG will keep this call open and anticipates future updates to the call.
Interested parties are kindly requested to contact the MPEG AG 5 Convenor Mathias Wien (wien@lfb.rwth- aachen.de) and submit responses for review at the 145th MPEG meeting in January 2024. Further details are given in the call, issued as AG 5 document N 104 and available from the mpeg.org website.
Research aspects: Learning-based data compression (e.g., for image, audio, video content) is a hot research topic. Research on this topic relies on datasets offering a set of common test sequences, sometimes also common test conditions, that are publicly available and allow for comparison across different schemes. MPEG’s Compressed Video for the study of Quality Metrics (CVQM) dataset is such a dataset, available here, and ready to be used also by researchers and scientists outside of MPEG. The call mentioned above is open for everyone inside/outside of MPEG and allows researchers to participate in international standards efforts (note: to attend meetings, one must become a delegate of a national body).
MPEG Systems-related Standards
At the 144th MPEG meeting, MPEG Systems (WG 3) produced three news-worthy items as follows:
Progression of ISOBMFF-related standards for the carriage of Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) video data.
Enhancement of the support of energy-efficient media consumption.
Support of temporal scalability for geometry-based Point Cloud Compression (PPC).
ISO/IEC 14496-15, a part of the family of ISOBMFF-related standards, defines the carriage of Network Abstract Layer (NAL) unit structured video data such as Advanced Video Coding (AVC), High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), Versatile Video Coding (VVC), Essential Video Coding (EVC), and Low Complexity Enhancement Video Coding (LCEVC). This standard has been further improved with the approval of the Final Draft Amendment (FDAM), which adds support for enhanced features such as Picture-in-Picture (PiP) use cases enabled by VVC.
In addition to the improvements made to ISO/IEC 14496-15, separately developed amendments have been consolidated in the 7th edition of the standard. This edition has been promoted to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS), marking the final milestone of the formal standard development.
Another important standard in development is the 2nd edition of ISO/IEC14496-32 (file format reference software and conformance). This standard, currently at the Committee Draft (CD) stage of development, is planned to be completed and reach the status of Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) by the beginning of 2025. This standard will be essential for industry professionals who require a reliable and standardized method of verifying the conformance of their implementation.
MPEG Systems (WG 3) also promoted ISO/IEC 23001-11 (energy-efficient media consumption (green metadata)) Amendment 1 to Final Draft Amendment (FDAM). This amendment introduces energy-efficient media consumption (green metadata) for Essential Video Coding (EVC) and defines metadata that enables a reduction in decoder power consumption. At the same time, ISO/IEC 23001-11 Amendment 2 has been promoted to the Committee Draft Amendment (CDAM) stage of development. This amendment introduces a novel way to carry metadata about display power reduction encoded as a video elementary stream interleaved with the video it describes. The amendment is expected to be completed and reach the status of Final Draft Amendment (FDAM) by the beginning of 2025.
Finally, MPEG Systems (WG 3) promoted ISO/IEC 23090-18 (carriage of geometry-based point cloud compression data) Amendment 1 to Final Draft Amendment (FDAM). This amendment enables the compression of a single elementary stream of point cloud data using ISO/IEC 23090-9 (geometry-based point cloud compression) and storing it in more than one track of ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF)-based files. This enables support for applications that require multiple frame rates within a single file and introduces a track grouping mechanism to indicate multiple tracks carrying a specific temporal layer of a single elementary stream separately.
Research aspects: MPEG Systems usually provides standards on top of existing compression standards, enabling efficient storage and delivery of media data (among others). Researchers may use these standards (including reference software and conformance bitstreams) to conduct research in the general area of multimedia systems (cf. ACM MMSys) or, specifically on green multimedia systems (cf. ACM GMSys).
MPEG-DASH Updates
The current status of MPEG-DASH is shown in the figure below with only minor updates compared to the last meeting.
MPEG-DASH Status, October 2023.
In particular, the 6th edition of MPEG-DASH is scheduled for 2024 but may not include all amendments under development. An overview of existing amendments can be found in the column from the last meeting. Current amendments have been (slightly) updated and progressed toward completion in the upcoming meetings. The signaling of haptics in DASH has been discussed and accepted for inclusion in the Technologies under Consideration (TuC) document. The TuC document comprises candidate technologies for possible future amendments to the MPEG-DASH standard and is publicly available here.
Research aspects: MPEG-DASH has been heavily researched in the multimedia systems, quality, and communications research communities. Adding haptics to MPEG-DASH would provide another dimension worth considering within research, including, but not limited to, performance aspects and Quality of Experience (QoE).
The 145th MPEG meeting will be online from January 22-26, 2024. Click here for more information about MPEG meetings and their developments.
JPEG AI reaches Committee Draft stage at the 100th JPEG meeting
The 100th JPEG meeting was held in Covilhã, Portugal, from July 17th to 21st, 2023. At this meeting, in addition to its usual standardization activities, the JPEG Committee organized a celebration on the occasion of its 100th meeting. This face-to-face meeting, the second after the pandemic, had a record amount of face-to-face participation, with more than 70 experts attending the meeting in person.
Several activities reached important milestones. JPEG AI became a committee draft after intensive meeting sessions with detailed analysis of the core experiment results and multiple evaluations of the considered technologies. JPEG NFT issued a call for proposals, and the first JPEG XE use cases and requirements document was also issued publicly. Furthermore, JPEG Trust has made major steps towards its standardization.
The 100th JPEG meeting had the following highlights:
JPEG Celebrates its 100th meeting;
JPEG AI reaches Committee Draft;
JPEG Pleno Learning-based Point Cloud coding improves its Verification Model;
JPEG Trust develops its first part, the “Core Foundation”;
JPEG NFT releases the Final Call for Proposals;
JPEG AIC-3 initiates the definition of a Working Draft;
JPEG XE releases the Use Cases and Requirements for Event-based Vision;
JPEG DNA defines the evaluation of the responses to the Call for Proposals;
JPEG XS proceeds the development of the 3rd edition;
JPEG Systems releases a Reference Software.
The
following sections summarize the main highlights of the 100th JPEG
meeting.
JPEG Celebrates its 100th meeting
The
JPEG Committee organized a celebration of its 100th meeting. A ceremony took
place on July 19, 2023 to mark this important milestone. The JPEG Convenor initiated
the ceremony, followed by a speech from Prof. Carlos Salema, founder and former
chair of the Instituto de Telecomunicações and current vice president of the
Lisbon Academy of Sciences, and a welcome note from Prof. Silvia Socorro,
vice-rector for research at the University of Beira Interior. Personalities
from standardization organizations ISO, IEC and ITU, as well as the Portuguese
government, sent welcome addresses in form of recorded videos. Furthermore, a
collection of short video addresses from past and current JPEG experts was
collected and presented during the ceremony. The celebration was preceded by a
workshop on “Media Authenticity in the Age of Artificial
Intelligence”. Further information on the workshop and its proceedings are
accessible on jpeg.org. A social event followed the celebration ceremony.
The 100th meeting celebration and cake.
100th meeting Social Event.
JPEG AI
The JPEG AI (ISO/IEC 6048) learning-based image coding
system has completed the Committee Draft of the standard. The current JPEG AI Verification
Model (VM) has two operation points, called base and high which include several
tools which can be enabled or disabled, without re-training the neural network
models. The base operation point is a subset of design elements of the high
operation point. The lowest configuration (base operating point without tools)
provides 8% rate savings over the VVC Intra anchor with twice faster decoding
and 250 times faster encoder run time on CPU. In the most powerful
configuration, the current VM achieves a 29% compression gain over the VVC
Intra anchor.
The performance of the JPEG AI VM 3 was presented and
discussed during the 100th JPEG meeting. The findings of the 15 core
experiments created during the previous 99th JPEG meeting, as well as other
input contributions, were discussed and investigated. This effort resulted in
the reorganization of many syntactic parts with the goal of their simplification,
as well as the use of several neural networks and tools, namely some design
simplifications and post filtering improvements. Furthermore, coding efficiency
was increased at high quality up to visually lossless, and region-of-interest
quality enhancement functionality, as well as bit-exact repeatability, were
added among other enhancements. The attention mechanism for the high operation
point is the most significant change, as it considerably decreases decoder
complexity. The entropy decoding neural network structure is now identical for
the high and base operation points. The defined analysis and synthesis
transforms enable efficient coding from high quality to near visually lossless
and the chroma quality has been improved with the use of novel enhancement
filtering technologies.
JPEG Pleno Learning-based Point Cloud coding
The
JPEG Pleno Point Cloud activity progressed at the 100th meeting with a major
improvement to its Verification Model (VM) incorporating a sparse convolutional
framework providing improved quality with a more efficient computational model.
In addition, an exciting new application was demonstrated showing the ability
of the JPEG VM to support point cloud classification. The 100th JPEG Meeting
also saw the release of a new point cloud test set to better support this
activity. Prior to the 101st JPEG meeting in October 2023, JPEG experts will
investigate possible advancements to the VM in the areas of attention models,
voxel pruning within sparse tensor convolution, and support for residual
lossless coding. In addition, a major Exploration Study will be conducted to
explore the latest point cloud quality metrics.
JPEG Trust
The
JPEG Committee is expediting the development of the first part, the “Core Foundation”,
of its new international standard: JPEG Trust. This standard defines a
framework for establishing trust in media, and addresses aspects of
authenticity and provenance through secure and reliable annotation of media
assets throughout their life cycle. JPEG Trust is being built on its 2022 Call
for Proposals, whose responses form the basis of the framework under
development.
The
new standard is expected to be published in 2024. To stay updated on JPEG
Trust, please regularly check the JPEG website at jpeg.org for the latest
information and reach out to the contacts listed below to subscribe to the JPEG
Trust mailing list.
JPEG NFT
Non-Fungible
Tokens (NFTs) are an exciting new way to create and trade media assets, and have
seen an increasing interest from global markets. NFTs promise to impact the
trading of artworks, collectible media assets, micro-licensing, gaming,
ticketing and more. At the same time,
concerns about interoperability between platforms, intellectual property rights,
and fair dealing must be addressed.
JPEG
is pleased to announce a Final Call for Proposals on JPEG NFT to address these
challenges. The Final Call for Proposals on JPEG NFT and the associated Use
Cases and Requirements for JPEG NFT document can be downloaded from the
jpeg.org website. JPEG invites interested parties to register their proposals by
2023-10-23. The final deadline for submission of full proposals is 2024-01-15.
JPEG AIC
During the
100th JPEG meeting, the AIC activity continued its efforts on the Core
Experiments, which aim at collecting fundamental information on the performance
of the contributions received in April 2023 in response to a Call for
Contributions on Subjective Image Quality Assessment. These results will be
considered during the design of the AIC-3 standard, which has been carried out
in a collaborative way since its beginning. The activity also initiated the definition
of a Working Draft for AIC-3.
Other
activities are also planned to initiate the work on a Draft Call for Proposals
on Objective Image Quality Metrics (AIC-4) during the 101st JPEG meeting,
October 2023. The JPEG Committee invites interested parties to take part in the
discussions and drafting of the Call.
JPEG XE
For the
Event-based Vision exploration, called JPEG XE, the JPEG Committee finalized a
first version of a Use Cases and Requirements for Event-based Vision v0.5
document. Event-based Vision revolves around a new and emerging image modality
created by event-based visual sensors. JPEG XE is about creation and
development of a standard to represent events in an efficient way allowing
interoperability between sensing, storage, and processing, targeting machine
vision and other relevant applications. Events in the context of this standard
are defined as the messages that signal the result of an observation at a precise
point in time, typically triggered by a detected change in the physical world.
The new Use Cases and Requirements document is the first version to become
publicly available and serves mainly to attract interest from external experts
and other standardization organizations. Although still in a preliminary
version, the JPEG committee continues to invest efforts into refining this
document, so that it can serve as a solid basis for further standardization. An
Ad-Hoc Group has been re-established to work on this topic until the 101st JPEG
meeting in October 2023. To stay informed about the activities please join the event-based
imaging Ad-hoc Group mailing list.
JPEG DNA
The JPEG
Committee has been exploring coding of images in quaternary representations
particularly suitable for image archival on DNA storage. The scope of JPEG DNA
is to create a standard for efficient coding of images that considers
biochemical constraints and offers robustness to noise introduced by the
different stages of the storage process that is based on DNA synthetic
polymers.
At the
100th JPEG meeting, “Additions to the JPEG DNA Common Test Conditions
version 2.0”, was produced which supplements the “JPEG DNA Common
Test Conditions” by specifying a new constraint to be taken into account
when coding images in quaternary representation. In addition, the detailed
procedures for evaluation of the pre-registered responses to the JPEG DNA Call
for Proposals were defined.
Furthermore,
the next steps towards a deployed high-performance standard were discussed and
defined. In particular, it was decided to request for the new work item
approval once a Committee Draft stage has been reached.
The
JPEG-DNA AHG has been re-established to work on the preparation of assessment
and crosschecking of responses to the JPEG DNA Call for Proposals until the
101st JPEG meeting in October 2023.
JPEG XS
The
JPEG Committee continued its work on the JPEG XS 3rd edition. The main goal of
the 3rd edition is to reduce the bitrate for on-screen content by half while
maintaining the same image quality.
Part 1 of the standard –
Core coding tools – is still under Draft International Standard (DIS) ballot.
For Part 2 – Profiles and buffer models – and Part 3 – Transport and container
formats – the Committee Draft (CD) circulation results were processed and the
DIS ballot document was created. In Part 2, three new profiles have been added
to better adapt to the needs of the market. In particular, two profiles are
based on the High 444.12 profile, but introduce some useful constraints on the
wavelet decomposition structure and disable the column modes entirely. This
makes the profiles easier to implement (with lower resource usage and fewer
options to support) while remaining consistent with the way JPEG XS is already
being deployed in the market today. Additionally, the two new High profiles are
further constrained by explicit conformance points (like the new TDC profile)
to better support market interoperability. The third new profile is called TDC
MLS 444.12, and allows the achievement of mathematically lossless quality. For
example, it is intended for medical applications, where a truly lossless
reconstruction might be required.
Completion of the JPEG XS
3rd edition standard is scheduled for January 2024.
JPEG Systems
At the 100th meeting the JPEG Committee produced the CD text of 19566-10, the JPEG Systems Reference Software. In addition, a JPEG white paper was released that provides an overview of the entire JPEG Systems standard. The white paper can be downloaded on the JPEG.org website.
Final Quote
“The JPEG Committee celebrated its 100th meeting, an
important milestone considering the current success of JPEG standards. This
celebration was enriched with significant achievements at the meeting, notably the
release of the Committee Draft of JPEG AI.” said Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi,
the Convenor of the JPEG Committee.
The 20th International Conference on Content-based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI) was held exclusively as an in-person event in Orleans, France, on September 20-22, 2023. The conference was organized by the University of Orleans and received support from SIGMM. This edition marked a significant milestone as it was the first fully physical conference following the pandemic, providing a welcome opportunity for face-to-face interactions. The event drew a diverse and international audience, with participation from between 70 and 80 attendees representing 18 countries (12 Europeans, 4 Asians, 1 American and 1 African). Additionally, the conference included a European meeting (CHIST-ERA XAIface project) associated with the main event, which brought together approximately 15 individuals. Furthermore, several engineering students from the University of Orleans were invited to participate, allowing them to gain insights into cutting-edge multimedia research and exchange knowledge and ideas.
Program highlights
The conference was structured around two keynote presentations. The first keynote was presented by Prof. Alberto del Bimbo from the University of Florence, who spoke on the topic of “AI-Powered Personal Fashion Advising.” During his talk, Prof. Delbimbo discussed the key tasks and challenges related to using artificial intelligence in the fashion advisory field.
The closing keynote was delivered by Prof. Nicolas Hervé from the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (French National Audiovisual Archive). Prof. Hervé highlighted the research activities conducted at Ina and how they could be integrated into information systems and enhance the value of their collections. His presentation provided insights into the practical applications of their work.
Presentation of our keynote speakers.
In conjunction with the presentation of 18 papers across four regular paper sessions, the 2023 conference adhered to the established tradition of previous editions by incorporating special sessions. These special sessions were designed to delve into the practical applications of multimedia indexing within specific domains or distinctive settings. This approach allowed for a more focused and in-depth exploration of several topics, offering valuable insights and discussions beyond the regular paper sessions.
In the ongoing year, we received a substantial volume of submissions, culminating in the approval of six special sessions. These special sessions have collectively embraced a total of 25 accepted papers.
Cultural Heritage and Multimedia Content
Interactive Video Retrieval for Beginners (IVR4B)
Physical Models and AI in Image and in Multi-modality
Computational Memorability of Imagery
Cross-modal multimedia analysis and retrieval for well-being insights
Explainability in Multimedia Analysis (ExMA)
The coordination of these special sessions involved the collaborative efforts of multiple countries, including France, Austria, Ireland, Iceland, the UK, Romania, Japan, Norway, and Vietnam.
The special sessions encompassed a diverse range of multimedia topics, spanning from applications such as cultural heritage preservation and retrieval to machine learning, with a particular focus on facets like explainability and the utilization of physical models.
The conference program was complemented by a poster session composed of fourteen posters. The latter was followed by a demo session which comprised IVR4B video retrieval competition.
Participants at the poster session.Participants at the demo session.
The best paper of the conference was awarded EUR 500, generously sponsored by ACM SIGMM. The selection committee quickly found consensus to award the best paper award to Romain XU-DARME, Jenny Benois-Pineau, Romain Giot, Georges Quénot, Zakaria Chihani, Marie-Christine Rousset and Alexey Zhukov for their paper “On the stability, correctness, and plausibility of visual explanation methods based on feature importance”.
Social events
In addition to the two conference dinners organized by the conference committee, the participants had the opportunity to enjoy a guided tour through Orleans on their way to the first restaurant.
Participants enjoyed the first dinner after the guided tour
Among the social events organized during CBMI 2023, was the Music meets Science concert with the support of ACM SIGMM. After a series of scientific presentations, participants were able to appreciate the works of Beethoven, Murphy and Lizee. We thank ACM SIGMM for their support which made this cultural event possible.
The Odyssée Quartet composed of François Pineau-Benois (violinist), Raphael Moraly (cellist), Olivier Marin (violist) and Audrey Sproule (violinist).
Outlook
The next edition of CBMI will be organized in Iceland. After several hybrid editions, we moved back on site towards the pre-pandemic level.
This column provides a report on the last Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) plenary meeting, which took place from 26 to 30 June 2023 in San Mateo (USA), hosted by Sony Interactive Entertainment. More than 90 participants worldwide registered for the hybrid meeting, counting with the physical attendance of more than 40 people. This meeting was co-located with the ITU-T SG12 meeting, which took place in the first two days of the week. In addition, more than 50 presentations related to the ongoing projects within VQEG were provided, leading to interesting discussions among the researchers attending the meeting. All the related information, minutes, and files from the meeting are available online on the VQEG meeting website, and video recordings of the meeting are available on Youtube.
In this meeting, there were several aspects that can be relevant for the SIGMM community working on quality assessment. For instance, there are interesting new work items and efforts on updating existing recommendations discussed in the ITU-T SG12 co-located meeting (see the section about the Intersector Rapporteur Group on Audiovisual Quality Assessment). In addition, there was an interesting panel related to deep learning for video coding and video quality with experts from different companies (e.g., Netflix, Adobe, Meta, and Google) (see the Emerging Technologies Group section). Also, a special session on Quality of Experience (QoE) for gaming was organized, involving researchers from several international institutions. Apart from this, readers may be interested in the presentation about MPEG activities on quality assessment and the different developments from industry and academia on tools, algorithms and methods for video quality assessment.
We encourage readers interested in any of the activities going on in the working groups to check their websites and subscribe to the corresponding reflectors, to follow them and get involved.
Group picture of the VQEG Meeting 26-30 June 2023 hosted by Sony Interactive Entertainment (San Mateo, USA).
Overview of VQEG Projects
Audiovisual HD (AVHD)
The AVHD group investigates improved subjective and objective methods for analyzing commonly available video systems. In this meeting, there were several presentations related to topics covered by this group, which were distributed in different sessions during the meeting.
The QAH group works on the quality assessment of health applications, considering both subjective evaluation and the development of datasets, objective metrics, and task-based approaches. The group is currently working towards an ITU-T recommendation for the assessment of medical contents. In this sense, Meriem Outtas (INSA Rennes, France) led an editing session of a draft of this recommendation.
CGI group is devoted to analyzing and evaluating of computer-generated content, with a focus on gaming in particular. In this meeting, Saman Zadtootaghaj (Sony Interactive Entertainment, Germany) an Nabajeet Barman (Kingston University, UK) organized a special gaming session, in which researchers from several international institutions presented their work in this topic. Among them, Yu-Chih Chen (UT Austin LIVE Lab, USA) presented GAMIVAL, a Video Quality Prediction on Mobile Cloud Gaming Content. Also, Urvashi Pal (Akamai, USA) delivered a presentation on web streaming quality assessment via computer vision applications over cloud. Mathias Wien (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) provided updates on ITU-T P.BBQCG work item, dataset and model development. Avinab Saha (UT Austin LIVE Lab, USA) presented a study of subjective and objective quality assessment of mobile cloud gaming videos. Finally, Irina Cotanis (Infovista, Sweden) and Karan Mitra (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden) presented their work towards QoE models for mobile cloud and virtual reality games.
The main objective of the ETG group is to address various aspects of multimedia that do not fall under the scope of any of the existing VQEG groups. The topics addressed are not necessarily directly related to “video quality” but can indirectly impact the work addressed as part of VQEG. This group aims to provide a common platform for people to gather together and discuss new emerging topics, discuss possible collaborations in the form of joint survey papers/whitepapers, funding proposals, etc.
One
of the topics addressed by this group is related to the use of
artificial-intelligence technologies to different domains, such as
compression, super-resolution, and video quality assessment. In this
sense, Saman Zadtootaghaj (Sony Interactive Entertainment, Germany)
organized a panel session with experts from different companies
(e.g., Netflix, Adobe, Meta, and
Google)
on deep learning in
the
video
coding and video quality domains.
In this sense, Marcos Conde (Sony Interactive Entertainment, Germany)
and David Minnen (Google, USA) gave a talk on generative
compression and the challenges for quality assessment.
The JEG group was focused on a joint work to develop hybrid perceptual/bitstream metrics and gradually evolved over time to include several areas of Video Quality Assessment (VQA), such as the creation of a large dataset for training such models using full-reference metrics instead of subjective metrics. In addition, the group will include under its activities the VQEG project Implementer’s Guide for Video Quality Metrics (IGVQM).
The website of the group includes a list of activities of interest, freely available publications, and other resources.
Immersive Media Group (IMG)
The IMG group is focused on the research on quality assessment of immersive media. The main joint activity going on within the group is the development of a test plan to evaluate the QoE of immersive interactive communication systems, which is carried out in collaboration with ITU-T through the work item P.IXC. In this meeting, Pablo Pérez (Nokia XR Lab, Spain) and Jesús Gutiérrez (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain) provided a report on the status of the test plan, including the test proposals from 13 different groups that have joined the activity, which will be launched in September.
Quality Assessment for Computer Vision Applications (QACoViA)
The goal of the QACoViA group is to study the visual quality requirements for computer vision methods, where the “final observer” is an algorithm. In this meeting, Avrajyoti Dutta (AGH University, Poland) delivered a presentation dealing with the subjective quality assessment of video summarization algorithms through a crowdsourcing approach.
Intersector Rapporteur Group on Audiovisual Quality Assessment (IRG-AVQA)
This VQEG meeting was co-located with the rapporteur group meeting of ITU-T Study Group 12 – Question 19, coordinated by Chulhee Lee (Yonsei University, Korea). During the first two days of the week, the experts from ITU-T and VQEG worked together on various topics. For instance, there was an editing session to work together on the VQEG proposal to merge the ITU-T Recommendations P.910, P.911, and P.913, including updates with new methods. Another topic addressed during this meeting was the working item “P.obj-recog”, related to the development of an object-recognition-rate-estimation model in surveillance video of autonomous driving. In this sense, a liaison statement was also discussed with the VQEG AVHD group. Also in relation to this group, another liaison statement was discussed on the new work item “P.SMAR” on subjective tests for evaluating the user experience for mobile Augmented Reality (AR) applications.
Other updates
One interesting presentation was given by Mathias Wien (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) on the quality evaluation activities carried out within the MPEG Visual Quality Assessment group, including the expert viewing tests. This presentation and the follow-up discussions will help to strengthen the collaboration between VQEG and MPEG on video quality evaluation activities.
The next VQEG plenary meeting will take place in autumn 2023 and will be announced soon on the VQEG website.
The 143rd MPEG meeting took place in person in Geneva, Switzerland. The official press release can be accessed here and includes the following details:
MPEG finalizes the Carriage of Uncompressed Video and Images in ISOBMFF
MPEG reaches the First Milestone for two ISOBMFF Enhancements
MPEG ratifies Third Editions of VVC and VSEI
MPEG reaches the First Milestone of AVC (11th Edition) and HEVC Amendment
MPEG Genomic Coding extended to support Joint Structured Storage and Transport of Sequencing Data, Annotation Data, and Metadata
MPEG completes Reference Software and Conformance for Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression
We have adjusted the press release to suit the audience of ACM SIGMM and emphasized research on video technologies. This edition of the MPEG column centers around ISOBMFF and video codecs. As always, the column will conclude with an update on MPEG-DASH.
ISOBMFF Enhancements
The ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF) supports the carriage of a wide range of media data such as video, audio, point clouds, haptics, etc., which has now been further extended to uncompressed video and images.
ISO/IEC 23001-17 – Carriage of uncompressed video and images in ISOBMFF – specifies how uncompressed 2D image and video data is carried in files that comply with the ISOBMFF family of standards. This encompasses a range of data types, including monochromatic and colour data, transparency (alpha) information, and depth information. The standard enables the industry to effectively exchange uncompressed video and image data while utilizing all additional information provided by the ISOBMFF, such as timing, color space, and sample aspect ratio for interoperable interpretation and/or display of uncompressed video and image data.
ISO/IEC 14496-15 (based on ISOBMFF) provides the basis for “network abstraction layer (NAL) unit structured video coding formats” such as AVC, HEVC, and VVC. The current version is the 6th edition, which has been amended to support neural-network post-filter supplemental enhancement information (SEI) messages. This amendment defines the carriage of the neural-network post-filter characteristics (NNPFC) SEI messages and the neural-network post-filter activation (NNPFA) SEI messages to enable the delivery of (i) a base post-processing filter and (ii) a series of neural network updates synchronized with the input video pictures/frames.
Research aspects: While the former, the carriage of uncompressed video and images in ISOBMFF, seems to be something obvious to be supported within a file format, the latter enables to use neural network-based post-processing filters to enhance video quality after the decoding process, which is an active field of research. The current extensions with the file format provide a baseline for the evaluation (cf. also next section).
Video Codec Enhancements
MPEG finalized the specifications of the third editions of the Versatile Video Coding (VVC, ISO/IEC 23090-3) and the Versatile Supplemental Enhancement Information (VSEI, ISO/IEC 23002-7) standards. Additionally, MPEG issued the Committee Draft (CD) text of the eleventh edition of the Advanced Video Coding (AVC, ISO/IEC 14496-10) standard and the Committee Draft Amendment (CDAM) text on top of the High Efficiency Video Coding standard (HEVC, ISO/IEC 23008-2).
These SEI messages include two systems-related SEI messages, (a) one for signaling of green metadata as specified in ISO/IEC 23001-11 and (b) the other for signaling of an alternative video decoding interface for immersive media as specified in ISO/IEC 23090-13. Furthermore, the neural network post-filter characteristics SEI message and the neural-network post-processing filter activation SEI message have been added to AVC, HEVC, and VVC.
The two SEI messages for describing and activating post-filters using neural network technology in video bitstreams could, for example, be used for reducing coding noise, spatial and temporal upsampling (i.e., super-resolution and frame interpolation), color improvement, or general denoising of the decoder output. The description of the neural network architecture itself is based on MPEG’s neural network representation standard (ISO/IEC 15938 17). As results from an exploration experiment have shown, neural network-based post-filters can deliver better results than conventional filtering methods. Processes for invoking these new post-filters have already been tested in a software framework and will be made available in an upcoming version of the VVC reference software (ISO/IEC 23090-16).
Research aspects: SEI messages for neural network post-filters (NNPF) for AVC, HEVC, and VVC, including systems supports within the ISOBMFF, is a powerful tool(box) for interoperable visual quality enhancements at the client. This tool(box) will (i) allow for Quality of Experience (QoE) assessments and (ii) enable the analysis thereof across codecs once integrated within the corresponding reference software.
MPEG-DASH Updates
The current status of MPEG-DASH is depicted in the figure below:
The latest edition of MPEG-DASH is the 5th edition (ISO/IEC 23009-1:2022) which is publicly/freely available here. There are currently three amendments under development:
ISO/IEC 23009-1:2022 Amendment 1: Preroll, nonlinear playback, and other extensions. This amendment has been ratified already and is currently being integrated into the 5th edition of part 1 of the MPEG-DASH specification.
ISO/IEC 23009-1:2022 Amendment 2: EDRAP streaming and other extensions. EDRAP stands for Extended Dependent Random Access Point and at this meeting the Draft Amendment (DAM) has been approved. EDRAP increases the coding efficiency for random access and has been adopted within VVC.
ISO/IEC 23009-1:2022 Amendment 3: Segment sequences for random access and switching. This amendment is at Committee Draft Amendment (CDAM) stage, the first milestone of the formal standardization process. This amendment aims at improving tune-in time for low latency streaming.
Additionally, MPEG Technologies under Consideration (TuC) comprises a few new work items, such as content selection and adaptation logic based on device orientation and signalling of haptics data within DASH.
Finally, part 9 of MPEG-DASH — redundant encoding and packaging for segmented live media (REAP) — has been promoted to Draft International Standard (DIS). It is expected to be finalized in the upcoming meetings.
Research aspects: Random access has been extensively evaluated in the context of video coding but not (low latency) streaming. Additionally, the TuC item related to content selection and adaptation logic based on device orientation raises QoE issues to be further explored.
The 144th MPEG meeting will be held in Hannover from October 16-20, 2023. Click here for more information about MPEG meetings and their developments.
