Emerging Technologies of Future Multimedia Coding, Analysis and Transmission

  Three years ago, ZTE Communications published a special issue called Emerging Technologies of Multimedia Coding, Analysis and Transmission. Over the past three years, great advances have been made in multimedia. The purpose of this special issue is to report on the progress and achievements in this field. We invited 11 papers, seven of which will be published in this issue and four in the next issues as research papers. All authors we invited are the top researchers in the area of multimedia from both academic and industry. Also, these papers have been reviewed by the experts who are working in the front of this area.

 
  The paper “Overview of the Second Generation AVS Video Coding Standard (AVS2)” by Shanshe Wang et al. introduces a new generation video coding standard developed by the AVS working group. Compared with the first generation video coding standard AVS1, AVS2 significantly improves coding performance. Also, AVS2 shows competitive performance compared to high efficiency video coding (HEVC). Especially for scene video, AVS2 can achieve 39% bit rate saving over HEVC.

  The paper “An Introduction to High Efficiency Video Coding Range Extensions” by Bin Li and Jizheng Xu introduces the coding tools in HEVC range extensions and provides experimental results to compare HEVC range extensions with previous video coding standards.

  The paper “Multi⁃Layer Extension of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) Standard” by Ming Li et al. presents an overview of multi⁃layer extension of HEVC. With the Multi⁃layer Extension, HEVC can then have its extension on Scalable HEVC, MV HEVC, 3D HEVC, etc.
The paper “SHVC, the Scalable Extensions of HEVC, and Its Applications” by Yan Ye et al. discusses SHVC, the scalable extension of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, and its applications in broadcasting and wireless broadband multimedia services. SHVC was published as part of the second version of the HEVC specification in 2014.

  The paper “ITP Colour Space and Its Compression Performance for High Dynamic Range and Wide Colour Gamut Video Distribution” by Peng Yin et al. introduces High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wider Colour Gamut (WCG) content format representation. With advances in display technologies, commercial interest in High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) content distribution are growing rapidly. In order to deliver HDR/WCG content, an HDR/WCG video distribution workflow has to be implemented, from content creation to final display.

  The paper “DASH and MMT and Their Applications in ATSC 3.0” by Yiling Xu, et al. mainly describes features and design considerations of ATSC 3.0 and discusses the applications of the transport protocols used for broadcasting. Additionally, the function of DASH and MMT is to meet the requirement of on⁃demand viewing of multimedia content over Internet Protocol (IP) with browser⁃centric media endpoints for more individualized and flexible access to the content.

  The paper “Introduction to the AVS2 Scene Video Coding Techniques” by Tiejun Huang et al. presents the special applications of AVS2 for surveillance video or video conference videos. By introducing several new coding techniques, AVS2 can provide more efficient compression of scene videos.

  The other four papers that have been reviewed and accepted will be published in the next issues due to the page limit.

  The paper “Review of AVS Audio Coding Standard” by Tao Zhang et al. presents AVS audio coding standard. The latest version of the AVS audio coding standard is ongoing and mainly aims at the increasing demands for low bitrate and high quality audio services. The paper reviews the history and recent development of AVS audio coding standard in terms of basic features, key techniques and performance. Finally, the future development of AVS audio coding standard is discussed.

  The paper “Screen Content Coding in HEVC and Beyond” by Tao Lin et al. describes an extension of HEVC specially designed to code the videos or pictures captured from a computer screen typically by reading frame buffers or recording digital display output signals of a computer graphics device. Screen content has many unique characteristics not seen in traditional content. By exploring these unique characteristics, new coding techniques can significantly improve coding performance for screen content.

  The paper “Depth Enhancement Methods for Centralized Texture⁃Depth Packing Formats” by Jar⁃Ferr Yang et al. presents a scheme which can deliver 3D videos through the current 2D broadcasting system with frame⁃compatible packing formats properly including one texture frame and one depth map in various down⁃sampling ratios have been proposed to achieve the simplest, most effective solution.

  The paper “Light Field Virtual View Rendering based on EPI⁃representations” by Lu Yu et al. presents a new idea for future video coding.

  Finally, thank all authors who accepted our invitations and submitted high quality papers in short time with their very busy schedule. Also we take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who provided very valuable comments for further improving the papers. The editors of ZTE Communications also made great contributions in this special issue.