The MPEG Internet Video-Coding Standard

Abstract

To address the diversified needs of the Internet, the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) started the project of Internet video coding (IVC) in July 2011. It is anticipated that any patent declaration associated with the baseline profile of this standard will indicate that the patent owner is prepared to grant a free-ofcharge license to an unrestricted number of applicants worldwide. IVC has been developed in MPEG from scratch by combining well-known existing technology elements and new contributions with free-of-charge licenses. Recently, IVC’s compression performance has been determined to be approximately equal to that of the advanced video coding high profile (AVC HP) for typical operational settings, both for streaming and lowdelay applications. In June 2015, the IVC project was approved as ISO/IEC 14496-33 (MPEG-4 IVC). It is believed that this standard can be highly beneficial for video services in the Internet domain. This article describes the main coding tools adopted in IVC; evaluates its performance compared with web video coding (WVC), video coding for browsers (VCB), and AVC HP; and provides the subjective comparison results between IVC and AVC HP.