Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) a new specification and implementation paradigm for MPEG codecs

Summary form only given. Multimedia coding technology, after about 20 years of active research, has delivered a rich variety of different and complex coding algorithms. Selecting an appropriate subset of these algorithms would, in principle, enable a codec designer to produce any desired trade-off between compression performance and implementation complexity. Currently, interoperability demands that this selection process be ldquohard-wiredrdquo into the normative description of the codec, or at best, a number of choices codified within the media syntax (i.e MPEG profiles). This talk presents an alternative paradigm for codec deployment that is currently under development by MPEG, known as Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC). Using RVC, the final objective is to enable arbitrary combinations of fundamental algorithms to be assembled, without additional standardization steps, because everything necessary for decoding is delivered alongside the content itself. The side-information consists of a description of the content syntax, as well as a description of the decoder configuration. Decoder configuration information is provided as a description of the interconnections between algorithmic blocks. The approach is based on describing all ldquoalgorithmsrdquo under the form of ldquolibraryrdquo of coding algorithms using CAL formalism and an XML dialect for the description of the configuration. The talk will briefly summarize the status of the RVC standardisation process, the different objectives from the point of view of a standard body, the technical problems solved so far, the open issues, and the interest and tools needed to support RVC specification on reconfigurable platforms.