JPEG Column: 95th JPEG Meeting

JPEG issues a call for proposals for JPEG Fake Media

The 95^th JPEG meeting was held online from 25 to 29 April 2022. A Call for Proposals (CfP) was issued for JPEG Fake Media that aims at a standardisation framework for secure annotation of modifications in media assets. With this new initiative, JPEG endeavours to provide standardised means for the identification of the provenance of media assets that include imaging information. Assuring the provenance of the coded information is essential considering the current trends and possibilities on multimedia technology.

This new initiative complements the ongoing standardisation of machine learning based codecs for images and point clouds. Both are expected to revolutionise the state of the art of coding standards, leading to compression rates beyond the current state of the art.

The 95^th JPEG meeting had the following highlights:

• JPEG Fake Media issues a Call for Proposals;
• JPEG AI
• JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Coding;
• JPEG Pleno Light Fields quality assessment;
• JPEG AIC near perceptual lossless quality assessment;
• JPEG NFT exploration;
• JPEG DNA explorations
• JPEG XS 2nd edition published;
• JPEG XL 2nd edition.

The following summarises the major achievements of the 95^th JPEG meeting.

JPEG Fake Media

At its 95th JPEG meeting, the committee issued a Final Call for Proposals (CfP) on JPEG Fake Media. The scope of JPEG Fake Media is the creation of a standard that can facilitate the secure and reliable annotation of media asset creation and modifications. The standard shall address use cases that are in good faith as well as those with malicious intent. The call for proposals welcomes contributions that address at least one of the extensive list of requirements specified in the associated “Use Cases and Requirements for JPEG Fake Media” document. Proponents are highly encouraged to express their interest in submission of a proposal before 20 July 2022 and submit their final proposal before 19 October 2022. Full details about the timeline, submission requirements and evaluation processes are documented in the CfP available on jpeg.org.

JPEG AI

Following the JPEG AI joint ISO/IEC/ITU-T Call for Proposals issued after the 94th JPEG committee meeting, 14 registrations were received among which 12 codecs were submitted for the standard reconstruction task. For computer vision and image processing tasks, several teams have submitted compressed domain decoders, notably 6 for image classification. Prior to the 95th JPEG meeting, the work was focused on the management of the Call for Proposals submissions and the creation of the test sets and the generation of anchors for standard reconstruction, image processing and computer vision tasks. Moreover, a dry run of the subjective evaluation of the JPEG AI anchors was performed with expert subjects and the results were analysed during this meeting, followed by additions and corrections to the JPEG AI Common Training and Test Conditions and the definition of several recommendations for the evaluation of the proposals, notably, the anchors, images and bitrates selection. A procedure for cross-check evaluation was also discussed and approved. The work will now focus on the evaluation of the Call for Proposals submissions, which is expected to be finalized at the 96th JPEG meeting.

JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Coding

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 for human and machine consumption including metaverse, autonomous driving, computer-aided manufacturing, entertainment, cultural heritage preservation, scientific research and advanced sensing and analysis. During the 95th JPEG meeting, the JPEG Committee reviewed the responses to the Final Call for Proposals on JPEG Pleno Point Cloud Coding. Four responses have been received from three different institutions. At the upcoming 96th JPEG meeting, the responses to the Call for Proposals will be evaluated with a subjective quality evaluation and objective metric calculations.

JPEG Pleno Light Field

The JPEG Pleno standard tools provide a framework for coding new imaging modalities derived from representations inspired by the plenoptic function. The image modalities addressed by the current standardization activities are light field, holography, and point clouds, where these image modalities describe different sampled representations of the plenoptic function. Therefore, to properly assess the quality of these plenoptic modalities, specific subjective and objective quality assessment methods need to be designed.

In this context, JPEG has launched a new standardisation effort known as JPEG Pleno Quality Assessment. It aims at providing a quality assessment standard, defining a framework that includes subjective quality assessment protocols and objective quality assessment procedures for lossy decoded data of plenoptic modalities for multiple use cases and requirements. The first phase of this effort will address the light field modality.

To assist this task, JPEG has issued the “JPEG Pleno Draft Call for Contributions on Light Field Subjective Quality Assessment”, to collect new procedures and best practices with regard to light field subjective quality assessment methodologies to assess artefacts induced by coding algorithms. All contributions, which can be test procedures, datasets, and any additional information, will be considered to develop the standard by consensus among the JPEG experts following a collaborative process approach.

The Final Call for Contributions will be issued at the 96th JPEG meeting. The deadline for submission of contributions is 18 December 2022.

JPEG AIC

During the 95th JPEG Meeting, the committee released the Draft Call for Contributions on Subjective Image Quality Assessment.

The new JPEG AIC standard will be developed considering all the submissions to the Call for Contributions in a collaborative process. The deadline for the submission is set for 14 October 2022. Multiple types of contributions are accepted, notably subjective assessment methods including supporting evidence and detailed description, test material, interchange format, software implementation, criteria and protocols for evaluation, additional relevant use cases and requirements, and any relevant evidence or literature.

The JPEG AIC committee has also started the preparation of a workshop on subjective assessment methods for the investigated quality range, which will be held at the end of June. The workshop targets obtaining different views on the problem, and will include both internal and external speakers, as well as a Q&A panel. Experts in the field of quality assessment and stakeholders interested in the use cases are invited.

JPEG NFT

After the joint JPEG NFT and Fake Media workshops it became evident that even though the use cases between both topics are different, there is a significant overlap in terms of requirements and relevant solutions. For that reason, it was decided to create a single AHG that covers both JPEG NFT and JPEG Fake Media explorations. The newly established AHG JPEG Fake Media and NFT will use the JPEG Fake Media mailing list.

JPEG DNA

The JPEG Committee has continued its exploration of the coding of images in quaternary representations, as it is particularly suitable for DNA storage applications. The scope of JPEG DNA is the creation of 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. A new version of the overview document on DNA-based Media Storage: State-of-the-Art, Challenges, Use Cases and Requirements was issued and has been made publicly available. It was decided to continue this exploration by validating and extending the JPEG DNA benchmark codec to simulate an end-to-end image storage pipeline using DNA for future exploration experiments including biochemical noise simulation. During the 95th JPEG meeting, a new specific document describing the Use Cases and Requirements for DNA-based Media Storage was created which is made publicly available. A timeline for the standardization process was also defined. Interested parties are invited to consider joining the effort by registering to the JPEG DNA AHG mailing list.

JPEG XS

The JPEG Committee is pleased to announce that the 2nd editions of Part 1 (Core coding system), Part 2 (Profiles and buffer models), and Part 3 (Transport and container formats) were published in March 2022. Furthermore, the committee finalized the work on Part 4 (Conformance testing) and Part 5 (Reference software), which are now entering the final phase for publication. With these last two parts, the committee’s work on the 2nd edition of the JPEG XS standards comes to an end, allowing to shift the focus to further improve the standard. Meanwhile, in response to the latest Use Cases and Requirements for JPEG XS v3.1, the committee received a number of technology proposals from Fraunhofer and intoPIX that focus on improving the compression performance for desktop content sequences. The proposals will now be evaluated and thoroughly tested and will form the foundation of the work towards a 3rd edition of the JPEG XS suite of standards. 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.

JPEG XL

The second edition of JPEG XL Part 1 (Core coding system), with an improved numerical stability of the edge-preserving filter and numerous editorial improvements, has proceeded to the CD stage. Work on a second edition of Part 2 (File format) was initiated. Hardware coding was also further investigated. Preliminary software support has been implemented in major web browsers, image viewing and editing software, including popular tools such as FFmpeg, ImageMagick, libvips, GIMP, GDK and Qt. JPEG XL is now ready for wide-scale adoption.

Final Quote

“Recent development on creation and modification of visual information call for development of tools that can help protecting the authenticity and integrity of media assets. JPEG Fake Media is a standardised framework to deal with imaging provenance.” said Prof. Touradj Ebrahimi, the Convenor of the JPEG Committee.

Upcoming JPEG meetings are planned as follows:

• No. 96, will be held online during 25-29 July 2022.