Earl Levine

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Earl Levine was one of the technical leaders in the fields of streaming media, data compression, and audio watermarking technologies during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and onward, winning the prestigious Capocelli Prize for data compression in 1997. [1] [2]

His PhD work at Stanford University was early in the field of artificial intelligence, creating vector quantized autoencoder convolutional neural networks. [3] He then invented the lossless audio codec method used in Apple Lossless Codec and FLAC, used to create the largest collection of lossless audio at the time. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] He worked at VXtreme until its acquisition by Microsoft. Following that he worked for Liquid Audio. Liquid Audio's patent portfolio, almost all of which he invented or co-invented, was acquired by Microsoft in 2002. [9]

He is also known for his successful hobby of training race horses including Fleet Crossing who won the Churchill Downs, MSW [10] [11]

He established one of the first shared neighborhood wi-fi systems in 2002 [12]

He graduated from Richardson High School in the same class as Carla Overbeck.

His son, Gabrael Levine, is the inventor of the Blackbird bipedal robot [13] and the preeminent developer of the OpenTorque actuator. [14]

Related Research Articles

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In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lossy compression</span> Data compression approach that reduces data size while discarding or changing some of it

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MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) practical.

Speech coding is an application of data compression to digital audio signals containing speech. Speech coding uses speech-specific parameter estimation using audio signal processing techniques to model the speech signal, combined with generic data compression algorithms to represent the resulting modeled parameters in a compact bitstream.

Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high resolution audio. A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity. WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.

Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) is a family of proprietary audio compression algorithms developed by Sony. MiniDisc was the first commercial product to incorporate ATRAC, in 1992. ATRAC allowed a relatively small disc like MiniDisc to have the same running time as CD while storing audio information with minimal perceptible loss in quality. Improvements to the codec in the form of ATRAC3, ATRAC3plus, and ATRAC Advanced Lossless followed in 1999, 2002, and 2006 respectively.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">JPEG 2000</span> Image compression standard and coding system

JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi, with the intention of superseding their original JPEG standard, which is based on a discrete cosine transform (DCT), with a newly designed, wavelet-based method. The standardized filename extension is .jp2 for ISO/IEC 15444-1 conforming files and .jpx for the extended part-2 specifications, published as ISO/IEC 15444-2. The registered MIME types are defined in RFC 3745. For ISO/IEC 15444-1 it is image/jp2.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indeo</span> Audio and video formats by Intel

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A video coding format is a content representation format of digital video content, such as in a data file or bitstream. It typically uses a standardized video compression algorithm, most commonly based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) coding and motion compensation. A specific software, firmware, or hardware implementation capable of compression or decompression in a specific video coding format is called a video codec.

QuickTime Graphics is a lossy video compression and decompression algorithm (codec) developed by Apple Inc. and first released as part of QuickTime 1.x in the early 1990s. The codec is also known by the name Apple Graphics and its FourCC SMC. The codec operates on 8-bit palettized RGB data. The bit-stream format of QuickTime Graphics has been reverse-engineered and a decoder has been implemented in the projects XAnim and libavcodec.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audio coding format</span> Digitally coded format for audio signals

An audio coding format is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio. Examples of audio coding formats include MP3, AAC, Vorbis, FLAC, and Opus. A specific software or hardware implementation capable of audio compression and decompression to/from a specific audio coding format is called an audio codec; an example of an audio codec is LAME, which is one of several different codecs which implements encoding and decoding audio in the MP3 audio coding format in software.

JPEG XS is an interoperable, visually lossless, low-latency and lightweight image and video coding system used in professional applications. Applications of the standard include streaming high quality content for virtual reality, drones, autonomous vehicles using cameras, gaming, and broadcasting. In this respect, JPEG XS is unique, being the first ISO codec ever designed for this specific purpose. JPEG XS, built on core technology from both intoPIX and Fraunhofer IIS, is formally standardized as ISO/IEC 21122 by the Joint Photographic Experts Group with the first edition published in 2019. Although not official, the XS acronym was chosen to highlight the eXtra Small and eXtra Speed characteristics of the codec. Today, the JPEG committee is still actively working on further improvements to XS, with the second edition scheduled for publication and initial efforts being launched towards a third edition.

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References

  1. ↑ "Data Compression Conference - Capocelli Prize". www.cs.brandeis.edu. Retrieved 2023-05-30.
  2. ↑ "Proceedings DCC '97. Data Compression Conference". Proceedings DCC 97 Data Compression Conference DCC-97. March 1997. pp. iii–. doi:10.1109/DCC.1997.581948. ISBN   0-8186-7761-9.
  3. ↑ Levine, Earl I. (1996). Stochastic vector quantization using neural networks (Thesis).
  4. ↑ US6043763A,Levine, Earl,"Lossless data compression with low complexity",issued 2000-03-28
  5. ↑ US6121904A,Levine, Earl,"Lossless data compression with low complexity",issued 2000-09-19
  6. ↑ US6125348A,Levine, Earl,"Lossless data compression with low complexity",issued 2000-09-26
  7. ↑ US6028541A,Levine, Earl,"Lossless data compression with low complexity",issued 2000-02-22
  8. ↑ US6118392A,Levine, Earl,"Lossless data compression with low complexity",issued 2000-09-12
  9. ↑ "Microsoft Rolls Out Rights Management Software". eWEEK. 2003-02-21. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
  10. ↑ "Earl Levine Horse Racing Nation Website".
  11. ↑ "Trainer Profile". www.equibase.com. Retrieved 2023-05-30.
  12. ↑ "Palo Alto Weekly: Networking with the Neighbors".
  13. ↑ "Gabrael Levine Development Website".
  14. ↑ "Hackaday OpenTorque Actuator; A powerful, compliant actuator for legged robotic Website".


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