HITACHI : Video Coding Technologies and Standards: Now and Beyond

March 2006

AUTHORS

Tomokazu Murakami	Digital Appliance Research Center, Embedded System Platform Research Lab., Central Research Lab., Hitachi, Ltd.
Hiroaki Ito	Digital Appliance Research Center, Embedded System Platform Research Lab., Central Research Lab., Hitachi, Ltd.
Muneaki Yamaguchi	Digital Appliance Research Center, Embedded System Platform Research Lab., Central Research Lab., Hitachi, Ltd.
Yuichiro Nakaya, Ph.D.	Corporate Technology Office, Hitachi Group Headquarters, Hitachi, Ltd.

OVERVIEW

Video coding technology compresses digital images—composed of huge amount of data—so they can be recorded and transmitted. International standards—under the standardization bodies called the MPEG and the ITU-T—is applied to all kinds of devices, ranging from digital home appliances (like digital-broadcast receivers, DVD players and hard-disk recorders) to mobile phones. A main feature of the video coding technology that has currently become mainstream is so-called hybrid coding, which combines high picture quality with high compression performance. Nevertheless, at the standardization bodies mentioned above, aiming at attaining even higher compression and better functionality, the search for new technologies has begun. Consequently, discussions on future directions of standardization have started. Up until now, Hitachi has been actively involved in putting forward standardization proposals and developing technologies for implementing video coding technology. Moreover, at present, we are investigating ways of improving the image quality of the current H.264 coding method and looking at ways to extend its application range. This paper overviews currentvideo coding technology, introduces the standardized technologies that we have proposed up till today, and presents some of our future research.

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RELEVANT SITES

	The MPEG Home Page
	MPEG Industry Forum
	International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
	The Hitachi Hyoron (Japanese Only)

KEYWORDS

video coding technology, H.264/AVC, MPEG, ITU-T VCEG, DVD/HDD recorder

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