DASH-IF receives first hand information on Versatile Video Coding

– September 11, 2020 - Elbonia, virtual –

Today, as part of our virtual special session series, DASH-IF received a primer on “The high-level syntax (HLS) designs in VVC” from Dr. Ye-Kui Wang, Principal Scientist at Bytedance. During session also colleagues from our partner organizations DVB, 3GPP and CTA WAVE were invited and many joined. We had an audience of 60 people, thanks everyone for joining.

The presentation provided an overview on Versatile Video Coding (VVC) – the freshly new video coding standard. Special focus for DASH-IF were the following aspects:

• System and transport interfaces of video codecs

  • System diagram and protocol stack
  • What is high-level syntax (HLS)
  • Why HLS

• An introduction to VVC HLS features

  • VVC bitstream structure and NAL unit types
  • Random access support
  • Parameter sets, picture header, slice header
  • POC and reference picture management
  • Tiles, WPP, slices, subpictures
  • Reference picture resampling (RPR)
  • Scalability
  • Profile, tier, level (PTL)
  • Hypothetical reference decoder (HRD)
  • DCI, VUI, SEI

The presentation was supported by great discussion. In particular, it stressed the importance of the DASH-IF initiated work item to start looking how we can make use of the new codec features for adaptive streaming and in particular ensure, that first HW decoders support the functionalities such as seamless switching, content splicing or codec configuration changes. DASH-IF will continue this work as part of our regular efforts and will communicate with the VVC developing organizations to support conformance programs.

Thank you all again for joining the presentation and the great discussions. And special thanks to Ye-Kui for the informative and entertaining presentation. DASH-IF always welcomes new experts and members to join our efforts and deliverables.