JPEG XS being used by NHK to broadcast 8K

[Misha Engel]

And another codec...

https://www.newsshooter.com/2019/01/05/jpeg-xs-being-used-by-nhk-to-broadcast-8k/

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Sounds good. MPEG-2 is still in wide use, despite it's age. H.264 is good for limited bandwidth applications but demands more processing muscle on encode and can look pretty awful if a lot of pixels change frame to frame (pan across a landscape, fast action). HEVC was intended to be the modern codec for HD and UHD TV but the patent trolls strangled its development. Without the legal hurdles, real time decoding on silicon had the potential to be a $5 per device solution.

JPEG-2000 is used for DCI (@250Mb/s) and underpins RedCode. It carries a lot of image information for a compressed format, but it's not well suited to the tiny bandwidth typically used for wide distribution. It also requires quite a bit of processing muscle to decode, so client devices would be bigger/heavier/larger/more expensive - and the odds of that happening outside the professional space...

If JPEG XS can do what they are claiming - and can be decoded on modest hardware - it just might make 4K and 8K manifest sooner. Hopefully before my eyesight goes...

Cheers - #19

 

[Misha Engel]

Sounds good. MPEG-2 is still in wide use, despite it's age. H.264 is good for limited bandwidth applications but demands more processing muscle on encode and can look pretty awful if a lot of pixels change frame to frame (pan across a landscape, fast action). HEVC was intended to be the modern codec for HD and UHD TV but the patent trolls strangled its development. Without the legal hurdles, real time decoding on silicon had the potential to be a $5 per device solution.

JPEG-2000 is used for DCI (@250Mb/s) and underpins RedCode. It carries a lot of image information for a compressed format, but it's not well suited to the tiny bandwidth typically used for wide distribution. It also requires quite a bit of processing muscle to decode, so client devices would be bigger/heavier/larger/more expensive - and the odds of that happening outside the professional space...

If JPEG XS can do what they are claiming - and can be decoded on modest hardware - it just might make 4K and 8K manifest sooner. Hopefully before my eyesight goes...

Cheers - #19

It's an mezzanine codec like ProRes, Cineform, etc.. but with a very low latency.
Depending on your understanding of modest hardware, here are some specs https://www.intopix.com/Ressources/Flyers/intoPIX-TICO%20FLYER_CPU%20SDK.pdf.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

A modern, cross platform mezzanine codec is certainly great news. Sounds like it might be good for distribution masters and even house masters short of the high end. I had mistakenly thought JPEG XS was also intended to be used for the actual distribution to viewers.

Not to threadjack, but I still have serious concerns about what might be done to our work by over compression for distribution. The current standard is abysmally awful with some content creating nasty artifacts. Music/dance/club scenes with strobes can easily turn into pixel salad as long GOP codecs hit the wall. There's also a lot of re-encoding of compressed material in the chain - adding bugs/IDs and conforming to a particular facility's chosen codec/bitrate. Concatenation artifact city.

Most of the public is unaware of what they're missing, but for those of us who have seen our work in the color suite first, and then on TV - it's appalling.

Cheers - #19

 

[Misha Engel]

A modern, cross platform mezzanine codec is certainly great news. Sounds like it might be good for distribution masters and even house masters short of the high end. I had mistakenly thought JPEG XS was also intended to be used for the actual distribution to viewers.

Not to threadjack, but I still have serious concerns about what might be done to our work by over compression for distribution. The current standard is abysmally awful with some content creating nasty artifacts. Music/dance/club scenes with strobes can easily turn into pixel salad as long GOP codecs hit the wall. There's also a lot of re-encoding of compressed material in the chain - adding bugs/IDs and conforming to a particular facility's chosen codec/bitrate. Concatenation artifact city.

Most of the public is unaware of what they're missing, but for those of us who have seen our work in the color suite first, and then on TV - it's appalling.

Cheers - #19

AV1 is coming... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1 so is 5G and 10G fiber internet for consumers has already landed in Sweden ($45/month).

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Thanks for the link Misha. Hopefully it happens around the globe sooner than later...

Cheers - #19

 

[Phil Holland]

Thanks for the link Misha. Hopefully it happens around the globe sooner than later...

About a year out from really hitting, then a year later you'll see it in many places.

 

[L. Langer]

HEVC was intended to be the modern codec for HD and UHD TV but the patent trolls strangled its development. Without the legal hurdles, real time decoding on silicon had the potential to be a $5 per device solution.
Cheers - #19

They strangled it's deployment, not it's development. On-chip HEVC decoding in real-time has been around for several years now, due to the media SOCs used in UHD-BD players, UHDTVs, provider set-top boxes, and the massive amount of Chinese-made Android-powered media players, but it was the encoding and distribution of media with the codec that were primarily targeted by the patent trolls, which is why the video and content delivery marketplace mostly stayed away from H.265 and kept using H.264. The bridge underside dwellers wanted individual usage fees - per download/stream - that kept it from going wide in the market and did not focus primarily on hardware implementation because it was in their interest to have the codec used far and wide to allow for as much of those royalties as possible. Now that AV1 is on the horizon, the HEVC Advance group - one of three groups in the patent troll pool - dropped their distribution royalty scheme and reduced their implementation royalty fee to encourage adoption of the codec, which is why there's been a bit of a bump in HEVC usage.