ITU-T Study Group 16

Last updated
ITU-T Study Group 16: Multimedia
AbbreviationSG16
Formation1997
Type Standards organization
PurposeMultimedia coding, systems and applications
Location
Region served
Worldwide
Chairman
Noah Luo
Secretary
Simao Campos
Key people
Seizo Onoe, Gary Sullivan, Thomas Wiegand
Publication H.264, H.265, H.266, JPEG, H.870
Parent organization
World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (ITU-T)
Subsidiaries VCEG, ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health
Affiliations ITU-T Study Group 17, ISO/IEC JTC 1
Website www.itu.int/go/tsg16

The ITU-T Study Group 16 (SG16) is a statutory group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with multimedia coding, systems and applications, such as video coding standards. It is responsible for standardization of the "H.26x" line of video coding standards, the "T.8xx" line of image coding standards, and related technologies, as well as various collaborations with the World Health Organization, including on safe listing (H.870) accessibility of e-health (F.780.2), it is also the parent body of VCEG and various Focus Groups, such as the ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health and its AI for Health Framework. [1]

Contents

Administratively, SG16 is a statutory meeting of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA), [2] which creates the ITU-T Study Groups and appoints their management teams. The secretariat is provided by the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (under Director Seizo Onoe). WTSA instructed ITU to hold the Global Standards Symposium as a part of the deliberations that is open to the public.

The goal of SG16 is to produce Recommendations (international standards) for multimedia, including e.g. video coding, audio coding and image coding methods, such as H.264, H.265, H.266, [3] and JPEG, as well as other types of multimedia related standards such as F.780.2, H.810, and H.870 on safe listening, together with the World Health Organization. It is also responsible for "the coordination of related studies across the various ITU-T SGs." Additionally, is also the lead study group on ubiquitous and Internet of Things (IoT) applications; telecommunication/ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities; intelligent transport system (ITS) communications; e-health; and Internet Protocol television (IPTV). [4]

Trustworthy AI

Together with ITU-T Study Group 17 and AI for Good, the study group has been developing technology specifications under Trustworthy AI. Including items on homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and federated learning.

See also

Related Research Articles

H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITU-T</span> Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union

The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and Information Communication Technology, such as X.509 for cybersecurity, Y.3172 and Y.3173 for machine learning, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC for video compression, between its Member States, Private Sector Members, and Academia Members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moving Picture Experts Group</span> Alliance of working groups to set standards for multimedia coding

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and file formats for various applications. Together with JPEG, MPEG is organized under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 – Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joint Photographic Experts Group</span> Non-profit organisation

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is the joint committee between ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 and ITU-T Study Group 16 that created and maintains the JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, JPEG XT, JPEG XS, JPEG XL, and related digital image standards. It also has the responsibility for maintenance of the JBIG and JBIG2 standards that were developed by the former Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advanced Video Coding</span> Most widely used standard for video compression

Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content, used by 91% of video industry developers as of September 2019. It supports a maximum resolution of 8K UHD.

H.261 is an ITU-T video compression standard, first ratified in November 1988. It is the first member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group. It was the first video coding standard that was useful in practical terms.

The Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group (JBIG) is a group of experts nominated by national standards bodies and major companies to work to produce standards for bi-level image coding. The "joint" refers to its status as a committee working on both ISO and ITU-T standards. It is one of two sub-groups of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1, whose official title is Coding of still pictures.

H.262 or MPEG-2 Part 2 is a video coding format standardised and jointly maintained by ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and developed with the involvement of many companies. It is the second part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-2 standard. The ITU-T Recommendation H.262 and ISO/IEC 13818-2 documents are identical.

The Video Coding Experts Group or Visual Coding Experts Group is a working group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with standards for compression coding of video, images, audio, and other signals. It is responsible for standardization of the "H.26x" line of video coding standards, the "T.8xx" line of image coding standards, and related technologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Wiegand</span> German electrical engineer (born 1970)

Thomas Wiegand is a German electrical engineer who substantially contributed to the creation of the H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and H.266/VVC video coding standards. For H.264/AVC, Wiegand was one of the chairmen of the Joint Video Team (JVT) standardization committee that created the standard and was the chief editor of the standard itself. He was also a very active technical contributor to the H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and H.266/VVC video coding standards. Wiegand also holds a chairmanship position in the ITU-T VCEG of ITU-T Study Group 16 and previously in ISO/IEC MPEG standardization organizations. In July 2006, video coding work of the ITU-T was jointly led by Gary J. Sullivan and Wiegand for the preceding six years. It was voted as the most influential area of the standardization work of the CCITT and ITU-T in their 50-year history. Since 2018, Wiegand has served as chair of the ITU/WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H). Since 2014, Thomson Reuters named Wiegand in their list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” as one of the most cited researchers in his field.

Gary Joseph Sullivan is an American electrical engineer who led the development of the AVC, HEVC, and VVC video coding standards and created the DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) API/DDI video decoding feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding. In comparison to AVC, HEVC offers from 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. It supports resolutions up to 8192×4320, including 8K UHD, and unlike the primarily 8-bit AVC, HEVC's higher fidelity Main 10 profile has been incorporated into nearly all supporting hardware.

A video coding format is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content. 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 to/from a specific video coding format is called a video codec.

MPEG-H is a group of international standards under development by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It has various "parts" – each of which can be considered a separate standard. These include a media transport protocol standard, a video compression standard, an audio compression standard, a digital file format container standard, three reference software packages, three conformance testing standards, and related technologies and technical reports. The group of standards is formally known as ISO/IEC 23008 – High efficiency coding and media delivery in heterogeneous environments. Development of the standards began around 2010, and the first fully approved standard in the group was published in 2013. Most of the standards in the group have been revised or amended several times to add additional extended features since their first edition.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29, entitled Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information, is a standardization subcommittee of the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It develops and facilitates international standards, technical reports, and technical specifications within the field of audio, picture, multimedia, and hypermedia information coding. SC 29 includes the well-known JPEG and MPEG experts groups, and the standards developed by SC 29 have been recognized by nine Emmy Awards.

Versatile Video Coding (VVC), also known as H.266, ISO/IEC 23090-3, and MPEG-I Part 3, is a video compression standard finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET), a joint video expert team of the VCEG working group of ITU-T Study Group 16 and the MPEG working group of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29. It is the successor to High Efficiency Video Coding. It was developed with two primary goals – improved compression performance and support for a very broad range of applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health</span>

The ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health is an inter-agency collaboration between the World Health Organization and the ITU, which created a benchmarking framework to assess the accuracy of AI in health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ITU-T Study Group 17</span> Standardization body focused on cyberseucirty standards, (e.g. X.509)

The ITU-T Study Group 17 (SG17) is a statutory group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with security. The group is concerned with a broad range of security-related standardization issues such as cybersecurity, security management, security architectures and frameworks, countering spam, identity management, biometrics, protection of personally identifiable information, and the security of applications and services for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is responsible for standardization of i.a. ASN.1 and X.509, it is also the parent body of the Focus Group on Quantum Information Technology (FG-QIT). The group is currently chaired by Heung Youl Youm of South Korea.

The ITU-T Study Group 13 (SG13) is a statutory group of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) concerned with networks, infrastructure and cloud computing, including the networking aspects of mobile telecommunications. Examples include: Y.1564, Y.1731, etc.. Recent work includes a series of standards on using machine learning in networking, such as Y.3172, Y.3173, Y.3176, and Y.3181.

Trustworthy AI is a programme of work of the ITU under its AI for Good programme. The programme advances the standardization of a number of Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including homomorphic encryption, federated learning, secure multi-party computation, differential privacy, zero-knowledge proof.

References

  1. "ITU-T SG16: Multimedia". www.itu.int. Archived from the original on 2020-05-29. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  2. "World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-20)". www.itu.int. Archived from the original on 2020-07-19. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  3. "New H.266 Video Coding Standard Claims to Be 50% More Efficient Than H.265". InfoQ. Archived from the original on 2020-10-17. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
  4. "Study Group 16 at a glance". www.itu.int. Archived from the original on 2019-11-15. Retrieved 2020-07-25.