Standardization status of 360 degree video coding and delivery

The emergence of consumer level capturing and display devices for 360 degree video creates new and promising segments in entertainment, education, professional training, and other markets. In order to avoid market fragmentation and ensure interoperability of 360 degree video ecosystems, industry and academia cooperate in standardization efforts in this field. In the video coding domain, 360 degree video invalidates many established procedures, e.g., concerning evaluation of the visual quality, while the specific content characteristics offer potential for higher compression efficiency beyond the current standards. Likewise, 360 degree video puts stricter demands on the system level aspects of transmission but may also offer the potential to enhance existing transport schemes. The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) as well as the Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) already started investigations into 360 degree video coding while numerous activities in the Systems subgroup of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) started to investigate application requirements and delivery aspects of 360 degree video. This paper reports on the current status of the outlined standardization efforts.