NEWS & PRESS
58th Meeting - Paris, France - July 12, 2012

JPEG investigates high-throughput compression technology over display stream transports

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a Working Group of ISO/IEC, the International Organisation for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission, (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1) and of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG16), responsible for the popular JPEG, JPEG 2000 and more recently, the JPSearch and JPEG XR families of imaging standards. The WG1 group meets nominally three times a year, in Europe, North America and Asia.

The latest meeting was held on July 9 - 12, 2012, in Paris, France hosted by the France National Body, AFNOR. JPEG will release a Call for Proposals for high-throughput compression technology over display stream transports. This call supports the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) initiative for standard methods to increase bandwidth or reduce interface power for high resolution display streams used by many consumer electronics appliances. The call will be available for public distribution by August 15, 2012.

JPEG is also exploring standardization of an image compression format to deliver High Dynamic Range (HDR) imagery using JPEG. Modern consumer image capture devices are capable of up to 12 bits of dynamic range. Likewise, modern image display devices exceed 8 bits of dynamic range per color component. JPEG is the most widely used image storage and delivery format of which a vast majority of the implementations support 8 bit images. This effort is examining the delivery of HDR images using a backward compatible version of JPEG. Contributions to this activity are welcomed for discussion at the next JPEG meeting.

In this context, JPEG also examines the possibilities of extending the JPEG standard to enable additional functionalities such as lossless, augmented reality & stereoscopic imaging and security & privacy. Moreover, the recently established JPEG Systems subgroup is further examining an integrating effort to incorporate all current and future JPEG standards in a system framework. WG1 is welcoming inputs to further develop this initiative.

The JPEG committee released a new version of its JPEG XR reference software that includes support for the new boxed-based file format based on the file format of 15444-2, JPEG 2000-2.

“JPEG welcomes the initiative of the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) to increase the bandwidth and power efficiency of the Display Port family of standards and is willing to supply its expertise on compression technology to support this project.” said Dr. Daniel Lee, Convener of the JPEG committee.

The JPEG web site has sponsorship opportunities for all companies involved in developments around JPEG. The marketing departments of interested companies should contact the webmaster, Richard Clark (webmaster@jpeg.org) for this high-traffic site.

The next (59th) WG 1 Meeting will be held on October 15-19, 2012, hosted by the Chinese National Body in Shanghai, China.

More information about JPEG and its work is available at www.jpeg.org or by contacting Iraj Sodagar and Peter Schelkens, the JPEG PR ad hoc group at pr@jpeg.org.