https://informitv.com/2020/06/14/mpeg-is-no-more/
Leonardo code
Leonardo Chiariglione is widely regarded as the father of MPEG, as the
co-founder of the Moving Picture Experts Group over thirty years ago.
Now, it seems MPEG is no more, at least as far as he is concerned.
Speaking to informitv, he offered coded clues to the cause. As ever, I
would be interested in your views. Our CONNECTED VISION newsletter
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William Cooper
Editor
MPEG is no more
14 June 2020
MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group, is no more. Leonardo
Chiariglione, who co-founded the group in 1988 and has chaired it since
then, has resigned because the MPEG group was closed. He suggests,
rather enigmatically, that there are those that would rather such an
organisation did not exist, posing the question of who benefits from
such an outcome.
MPEG was formed as a working group of the International Standards
Organisation and International Electrotechnical Commission. The official
designation is ISO/IES JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11, that is Joint Technical
Committee 1, Sub Committee 29, Working Group 11. Most people know it as
MPEG and it has given this name to a suite of 180 audio and video coding
standards that are used worldwide.
The 130th quarterly meeting was due to take place in Austria in April
but instead was held as the first online only meeting of the group, with
more than 600 participants. It seems it may be the last, at least the
last to be chaired by Leonardo Chiariglione.
A statement on the home page of the MPEG group, hosted at
chiariglione.org, says it was updated until 6 June 2020, “the day when
the MPEG founder and convenor Leonardo Chiariglione has resigned because
the MPEG group was closed”.
MPEG
It seems that Sub Committee 29 decided to “erase” the MPEG group,
although the subcommittee will continue and so will its existing
standards. Whether its work will continue to have the same impact, or
whether some form of MPEG initiative will re-emerge outside the ISO
process, remain to be seen.
After a degree in Electronic Engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin
in 1967, the father of MPEG gained a PhD in Electrical Communication
from the University of Tokyo in 1973. He launched the ISO/IEC Moving
Picture Experts Group in 1988, recognising the need for an organisation
that would create digital media standards so that consumers could
seamlessly communicate and enable a global market of interoperable
products, services and applications.
Since then, MPEG has become almost synonymous with digital video
compression, much as JPEG, from the Joint Photographic Experts Group,
has become synonymous with still image compression.
However, there are many competing standards for advanced video
compression and the field is flooded with intellectual property claims,
meaning that adoption is encumbered by patent licensing issues,
resulting in cost, complexity and uncertainty.
The Alliance for Open Media, or AOM, was formed in 2015 to develop a
royalty-free alternative. The founding members were Amazon, Cisco,
Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix. They have since been
joined by Apple, ARM, Facebook, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung and Tencent as
governing members, with many more general members.
Alliance for Open Media
The Alliance requires technology contributors to disclose all patents
that may be relevant and to agree to a royalty-free patent license. It
will release video codecs as free software under an open source licence.
Its first project was to develop AV1, a new open video codec and format
as a successor to VP9 and a royalty-free alternative to HEVC, or H.265,
otherwise known as MPEG-H Part 2, the successor to AVC, or H.264,
otherwise known as MPEG-4 Part 10.
HEVC has had some success in the broadcast industry, as the successor to
AVC and MPEG-2, but has seen less adoption in online usage, where some
of the most powerful players are involved in the Alliance for Open
Media, although support for AV1 remains patchy.
Speaking to informitv, the father of MPEG was characteristically
philosophical. “MPEG is no more,” he said. “An answer may come if you
connect the dots guided by the maxim ‘cui prodest?’” In other words, who
benefits? The phrase is often used to suggest that the perpetrator of a
crime stands to benefit.
“I had this vision 33 years ago,” he said. “I took care of the baby and
then the baby grew up. I had a lot of personal satisfaction from that.
If the industry thinks they don’t need that baby, so be it.”
mpeg.chiariglione.org
aomedia.org
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