LAS VEGAS—If you were a broadcaster walking the aisles of the 2018 NAB Show earlier this month in Las Vegas, no one could blame you if you focused much of your attention when it came to video compression on HEVC, or its extension SHVC, which will help to power Next-Gen TV.
However, high efficiency video coding as implemented by ATSC 3.0 wasn’t the only compression development that promises new efficiencies for those in the M&E industry.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS used the Las Vegas venue to announce the first JPEG XS codec implementation for professional video. The research institute demonstrated its new codec as an input format for post-production.
Specifically, Fraunhofer showed JPEG XS as a software plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CC, providing real-time playback of 4K 60p UHD video in a Windows environment using an NVidia graphics card to accelerate decoding.
[Read: A discussion with Fraunhofer on what’s ahead in compression]
Fraunhofer is positioning its new codec as a solution to the impending train wreck it sees when the ever-growing data demands of higher res video and HDR meets the limitations of coax cables in studios. Exacerbating the problem is the desire of production companies to move away from specialized switches and cable for video transport to commercial off-the-shelf alternatives that move IP packets via standard Ethernet infrastructures.
The JPEG XS codec, which is being standardized by the JPEG committee for IP workflows in studios, local video networks and VR/AR applications (ISO/IEC SC29 WG1), enables high-res video transfer via standard Ethernet and other wired connections, Fraunhofer says.
It is optimized for use with mezzanine compression applications involving high-res video to be transferred over limited bandwidth or when limited computer resources are employed. JPEG XS is also designed to take advantage of the SMPTE ST 2110 transport layer.
