Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
I am a proud MPEG member since the Warsaw meeting (112).
What do you think makes MPEG special?
Every three months, 400+ engineers travel across the world to sit together and work on new technologies. It is an incredibly inspiring environment. And despite popular belief, it is much more than audio and video. It is a source of inspiration and collaboration. This can be seen in the MPEG-G effort. This effort grew from the observation of a need and the availability of expertise in the whole spectrum of data compression, management, and transport. Although I have always been a video man (even in high school already), I am glad that MPEG is open to widening its’ scope and sharing its’ expertise to other domains. Hell, we were even discussing syringe production last meeting :-). We have the process to create an ISO standard, the experience, and the knowledge. We should use these for much more than video and audio.
What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
MPEG is everywhere in people’s lives:
It allows us all to make a nice video (even 4K) with our smartphone and send it to our loved ones at the other side of the world within seconds. Which comes in handy when you attend an MPEG meeting ;-).
Additionally: DASH. It allowed MPEG to actually offer state-of-the-art performance across the complete streaming chain. Streaming, the basis of current multimedia consumption (Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Prime,…).
Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
Given that MPEG is more and more company-driven and thus more dynamic, it is hard for academia to set up long-term research projects (e.g. for video compression) and hence to do research within the MPEG environment. However, newer initiatives (which are still in unproven territory, revenue-wise, and thus less of interest to companies) such as MPEG-I and MPEG-G are for sure very interesting from a research point of view.
Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
Confusing as it can be (especially in the beginning), it is an amazing feeling to meet on a regular basis with experts in your field and to work together with them to improve (or even design from scratch) standards. The processes are sometimes a bit complex and slow, but as proven during the evolution of MPEG-G they are necessary and provide excellent results.
Are you happy with MPEG standards?
I sincerely am. It is amazing what MPEG standards have enabled in the past 3 decades. A downside however is the whole struggle we have with patents and licensing. As you stated many times before, the HEVC debacle has cast a shadow over everything with the name MPEG (from a license point of view). But I see them as “growing pains” which will in the end be solved, one way or another.
Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
From a compression and data exchange point of view, they clearly are. To be honest, I was “scared” when the AV1 efforts started, but now I’m much more relaxed. They too proof how hard it is to get a group of companies/institutes aligned and to come up with a decent standard. And as I mention to people who are not aware of MPEG, which standard organism can claim that they are supported by such a wide set of companies and universities: Philips, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp, Broadcom, Tencent, Mediatek, Microsoft, Technicolor, Fraunhofer, Intel, Apple, Huawei, KDDI, Ericsson, EPFL, …
What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
As I stated in point two: more and new domains where we can help with the storage and processing of large amounts of data.
And a second path, based on MPEG-5 baseline, where we provide standards that are based on “older” but still very good and proven technologies. Many technologies (such as CABAC) are incredibly good and offer performance that is almost on-par with current evolutions. This could be a backup-track if something goes really south with VVC licensing (which I sincerely hope it will not).
