MPAI’s raison d’être is developing standards. So, including the word in the title looks like a pleonasm. But there is a reason: the word standard can be used to mean several things. Let’s first explore which ones. In my order of importance the first is “information representation”. If there were no standard saying that 65 (in 7 or 8 bits) means “A” and 97 means “a” there would be no email and no WWW. Actually there would not have been…
Toward the end of the 1980’s, the television industry went crazy with digital TV: Among service providers you had the full spectrum of feelings: people yearning for it (satellite TV, cable TV and telecom), people exploiting it for different purposes (some terrestrial broadcasters), people fearing it (other terrestrial broadcasters) and people hating it (still other terrestrial broadcasters). Among manufacturers, the general feeling was of love (new markets and/or new products added to/replacing old products) mixed with fear (a competitor’s format winning the competition).…
(By Dr. Jon Peddie PE, President, Jon Peddie Research, Tiburon, CA) Every time you watch a video or listen to music on your phone, computer, or TV, you use a data compressor-decompressor called a CODEC. By compressing the data representing the content you’re interested in, more people can use the already crowded networks we rely on every day, all day. The primary CODEC in use today is MPEG – the Moving Picture Experts Group. It has served us well since…
Friends, world citizens, lend me your ears; I come to bury MPEG, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with MPEG. The noble ISO Hath told you MPEG was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath MPEG answer'd it. Here, under leave of ISO and the rest For ISO is an honourable man; So are they all,…
19 July 2020: the idea of MPAI Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence has a twofold mission: to develop standards for compression of video, audio and data, and to bridge the gap between its standards and their practical use. 19 July 2021: MPAI is not just an idea This is how far we’ve come MPAI established as a formal organisation based in Geneva 40 members Standard development process adopted 10 standards projects under way 4 standards under development…
MPEG started as a group tasked to develop a standard for interactive video on compact disc (CD). That was the great idea to make a standard that made sense. Telcos were not providing meaningful access to broadband. At most, you could get 64 kbit/s. Even today, after 30+ years of impetuous progress in compression, you don’t get much from a 64 kbit/s video. Therefore, for years and years, the videotelephone and videoconference business stagnated. Developing a standard for a consumer-application…
