(openPR) - Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute takes the lead in development of the future video codec HEVC

On 23 April 2010 the Joint Collaborative Team (JCT) on Video Coding of the ITU and ISO/IEC adopted the video coding technology proposed by Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute as part of its starting point for the next-generation video coding standardization project, also referred to as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC). The first test model of HEVC will also include parts of proposals put forward by other members of the JCT. HEVC is the follow-up project to H.264/AVC (Rec. ITU-T H.264 / ISO/IEC 14496-10). The new standard is expected to be completed by summer/fall 2012 and will then be released by the ITU-T as H.265. In comparison to its predecessor H.264/AVC – in which Fraunhofer HHI also played a leading role – the new standard aims at further gains in compression capability by a factor of 2 while retaining the same picture quality.

As current developments clearly show, broadcasters and viewers are increasingly opting for high picture quality – enriched by novel formats like 3DTV, also in HD quality. These digital video signals generate extremely high data rates which could not be transmitted without first being compressed. The critical challenge for data compression is how to reduce the data rate without affecting picture quality. The flexible H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding) standard which can be deployed across a wide range of applications was a major step in this direction and is now widely used in mobile phones, iPods, for Internet video (YouTube, Quicktime, Windows Media), for digital video broadcasting whether terrestrial, cable, or direct satellite, as well as in every Blu-Ray player. It is estimated that there are now over one billion end devices worldwide equipped with H.264/AVC.

The new HEVC standardization project is working on a successor standard to H.264/AVC. The main goal is to achieve a much more efficient coding than H.264/AVC with average data-rate savings of around 50 percent for almost all applications. To this end, the Joint Collaborative Team of the ITU-T VCEG and ISO/IEC MPEG issued a Call for Proposals (CfP). All received proposals were evaluated by a series of formal subjective tests for assessment of the visual quality at a set of pre-defined bit rates. The excellent results achieved by the HHI proposal in these subjective tests together with its low level of complexity led to its adoption in the first test model of the new standardization project. One of its truly outstanding features is the revolutionary concept developed by Fraunhofer HHI for what is known as ‘entropy coding’. For this lossless data compression process, typically involving the assignment of variable-length bit sequences to symbols of the video coding scheme, a completely new approach has been proposed.

Currently, the new HEVC test model technology has shown to provide average data-rate savings of approximately 30 percent when compared to H.264/AVC at the same picture quality. Whether the target of 50 percent, or equivalently, a compression factor of 2 relative to its predecessor is possible will be shown by further developments in which the Fraunhofer HHI team will also be involved. As with many other large-scale projects, teamwork is an essential ingredient in any successful outcome. The team at Fraunhofer HHI is made up of 20 scientists headed by Dr. Detlev Marpe, Dr. Heiko Schwarz and Prof. Dr. Thomas Wiegand.

Contact
Prof. Dr. Thomas Wiegand
Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute
Tel +49 (0)30 31002-617
eMail thomas.wiegand@hhi.fraunhofer.de

Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut

World leaders in the development of mobile and fixed communication networks and their key applications

Founded in 1928, over the course of its more than 80 year history the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, has developed into one of the world’s leading research institutes for the development of mobile and fixed communication networks and the key technologies that drive them. Today’s R&D focus is on electronic imaging and interactive media, communication networks and photonic components.

In 2008 the Institute had an operating budget of approx. 25 million Euro. The ratio of third party funding lay at 76 percent of which 42 came from industry, 31 percent from contract research for the Federal Government and individual State Governments and 22 percent from funding by the European Union.

Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute
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Corporate Communications - Dr. Gudrun Quandel
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