AITech Special Session Review: Interpretation of Opportunities and Challenges of UHD and VR Technology by Academia, Industry, and Policy

Next is the formal sharing session with the guests.

The first person to appear was Academician Ding Wenhua of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The topic he shared was China's ultra-high-definition HDR and 3D Audio standards and applications.

Academician Ding Wenhua first shared the rapid development of high-definition 4K technology in China in the past two years. Both the number of households and 4K smart devices have experienced explosive growth. In 2017, China's 4K TV production has exceeded 33 million, accounting for more than 40% of global 4K TV shipments.

In May 2016, in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the AVS Technology Application Joint Promotion Working Group began to promote the production of China's ultra-high-definition HDR and 3D audio industry standards and national standards. During the entire standard production process, it is inevitable to encounter many problems that need to be solved. The working group first analyzed relevant technical points based on proposals from different companies and organizations and formed an analysis report. On this basis, two rounds of testing were arranged. The first round of testing did not consider encoding and was only generated in the early stage of HDR. In the second round of testing, the encoding and decoding processes were added. Strict testing procedures ensure that industry standards can be successfully implemented in real environments. In addition, in the formulation of some important and difficult standards, a method of soliciting proposals from around the world has also been adopted. At the application level, relevant adaptations have also been made taking into account the content imported from overseas.

As of March this year. The entire working group has completed the draft of the HDR standard and has submitted it to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television for approval.

Academician Ding Wenhua concluded: With the development of HDR and 3D standards, it will drive a new round of development for the ultra-high definition industry. The second half of this year is a very important deployment year. There are currently no insurmountable obstacles on the production side. It is hoped that the industry will make good use of this golden period to jointly accelerate the development of the industry.

The second person to appear was Yu Lu, the current director of the Institute of Information and Communication Network Engineering at Zhejiang University. The topic he shared was "AVS2 Ultra-HD Encoding and Subsequent Standard Plan"

Yu Lu served as the leader of the video group of the National Digital Audio and Video Codec Technology Standards Working Group (AVS) from 2005 to 2017, and is currently the leader of the MPEG video group. Her main research areas include visual perception, video coding, multimedia communications, and application-specific integrated circuits. Design etc. At the conference, she shared the current status and needs of high-efficiency video coding applications, the core technology of the AVS2 ultra-high-definition video coding standard, and the new video compression standard plans of various organizations.

When talking about the current situation and demand for efficient video encoding, Professor Yu Lu cited two sets of data from an industry report released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology:

From the "Cisco Visual Network Indicators" distributed in 2017, it can be predicted that video services and content will continue to become the main source of network data traffic in the future. The problems brought about by the rapid development of video are also obvious, such as huge storage problems, network broadband problems, etc. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find an efficient and economical encoding and decoding technology.

Next, Professor Yu Lu gave a brief introduction to the three common video coding standard organizations (AVS, MPEG, VCEG), and made a key review of the development history of the AVS video coding standard. The AVS standard stipulates the syntax, semantics, and decoding method of the code stream, but does not specify the encoding method, leaving enough room for enterprises and industries to create differentiated products for different application categories.

The video coding standard advances on a ten-year cycle, generation by generation, and AVS2 has twice the compression efficiency as AVS1. Professor Yu Lu revealed that the next task is to develop AVS3, with the goal of more than doubling the performance of AVS2 and supporting efficient encoding of panoramic videos.

The next guest speaker was Ma Fulong, chief scientist of Philips China Research Institute. The topic he shared was advanced HDR solutions.

The five dimensions of video development represent a direction for the future industry's understanding of video, which include higher resolution, higher frame rate, bright depth, high dynamic range and wide color gamut. Philips has maintained its world leadership in high dynamic range images (HDR).

Dr. Ma Fulong said that HDR has a higher dynamic range, which means higher contrast. It is worth noting that it is independent of pixel density (that is, definition), and the industry has always believed that this is the mainstream direction of next-generation video.

Next, Ma Fulong gave a detailed introduction to the advanced HDR (advanced-HDR) solution jointly launched by Philips and technicolor, including its framework, technical details and technical features. Its technical feature is that it supports content in multiple HDR formats and can be applied to various front-end professional equipment and consumer electronic equipment such as televisions and set-top boxes. Key to the framework and technical details of advanced HDR is the generation and use of dynamic metadata.

In actual broadcast or live broadcast, Philips also provides a hybrid HDR live broadcast solution. This solution has two major features. First, it can maximize the use of existing broadcast systems and network systems to reduce costs as much as possible. Second, all SDR materials can be used, including past videos, commercials, graphic information, etc. Ma Fulong also introduced a tool that can convert SDR into HDR, called ITM (Intelligent Tone Mapping). It is a professional training tool that can be used for offline processing or real-time processing.

Finally, Ma Fulong summarized the versatility, progressiveness, compatibility, and bandwidth and cost savings of advanced HDR. Advanced HDR is compatible with all HDR strategies, providing a progressive solution from the early adoption of the HDR10 standard to high-quality. It provides a single video stream solution, saving bandwidth and cost by avoiding having to dedicate HDR channels.

The fourth guest speaker was Luo Chuanfei, a video technology expert from China Telecom Shanghai Research Institute. The topic he shared was the application of IPTV full 4K and AVS2 technology.

Mr. Luo Chuanfei said that in the next five years, the ultra-high definition industry will enter a golden period of development.

China TV started the practice and exploration of 4K video business at the end of 2014. In practice, everyone quickly discovered that if the TV size is not large enough, below 60 inches, the 4K video experience will not be greatly improved. However, the trial of the 4K video industry is of great significance. It first promoted the prosperity and development of the domestic chip and terminal industry, and actually promoted the update and construction of operators' broadband networks and infrastructure.

Starting from the second half of 2017, the IPTV industry has basically completed basic preparations for the full 4K stage. The next stage of improvement directions and innovative methods will focus on 8K video and VR technology. As of the end of 2017, the development of 4K ultra-high definition is that China Telecom Tianyi HD has 97 million users, China Mobile has 57 million users, and China Unicom Wo TV has 30 million users. And these figures can be expected to continue to grow.

Next, Mr. Luo Chuanfei briefly sorted out several standards of ultra-high definition mainstream technology. Including ultra-high definition mainstream application standard organizations; ITU, CCSA, etc., ultra-high definition video coding and decoding standards: AVS2.0, H.265, etc. HDR (High Dynamic Range) standards, etc.: HDR10, HLG, etc.

When talking about the experience and definition of full 4K, Luo Chuanfei believes that the experience must be more realistic, more immersive, more universal, and more operable. The core of full 4K deployment is to cooperate with the development and improvement of the content industry and terminal display industry to give users full play to the display capabilities of different TVs and present the highest quality of experience.

The core of the key technologies for full 4K application standards is to be consistent with the domestic HDR industry standards and national standards in terms of basic requirements such as brightness, curves, color gamut, bit depth, and encoding and decoding methods. The full 4K function test includes 6-dimensional processing functions, 10-bit output functions, etc. The performance test includes selecting eleven different scenes to evaluate the subjective feelings of overall layering, transparency, fluency, clarity, and color saturation.

Finally, Luo Chuanfei and other representatives collectively took the stage and released the latest "IPTV Business System AVS2 Implementation Guide."

Yeong-Taeg Kim, General Manager of Samsung Electronics, shared the topic of HDR10+: the easiest way to bring high HDR quality over legacy platform.

Yeong-Taeg Kim first introduced HDR10+ as the easiest way to achieve high HDR quality with traditional platforms.

First of all, HDR10+ is very light, with only dozens of metadata, and secondly it is an open source technology with free patents and free licenses, and Samsung shares core IP with major DTV chip manufacturers.

Finally, he concluded that HDR10+ is a simple and cost-effective solution to bring HDR experience to consumers. Since Bezier curves have a high degree of freedom and flexibility, this method should also be feasible.

Samsung will provide deep learning-based Basis OOTF solutions for HDR10+, which will bring a more pleasant consumption experience for HDR videos in HDR TVs.

Next came Wang Ronggang, a professor at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. The topic of his speech was the progress of virtual reality video coding standards.

Next, Wang Ronggang demonstrated the VR video standard framework, VR video representation model and experimental results respectively. In terms of applications, Alibaba Cloud has currently implemented a VR video system based on AVS VR. Finally, he said that the next phase of standard work is six-degree-of-freedom video representation, encoding and real-time rendering.

Youku VR technology expert Sheng Xiaojie shared the topic of Alibaba’s Youku VR application practice.

First, Sheng Xiaojie made a general review of the practical development of Alibaba’s VR technology. In May 2016, Youku VR technology research and development project was launched. In August 2017, it participated in the AVS VR meeting and participated in the formulation of VR video coding standards and related proposals were adopted by the standards. In March 2018, we began to promote the integration of VR standards and Alibaba Cloud services.

Next, Sheng Xiaojie interpreted the four core technical points of VR technology: collection terminal, cloud terminal, client terminal and standard, and introduced the functions of each part from the overall framework. Finally, he made several real VR case demonstrations for everyone, such as Alibaba Annual Meeting, Zou Shiming Boxing Match, and Xiami Music Festival, all of which used Youku Video VR technology.

The last guest speaker was Zhang Qing, the chief expert from Boya Lingrui. The theme of the sharing was the exploration and practice of industrialization of artificial intelligence technology.

Mr. Zhang Qing compared traditional industries and artificial intelligence industries to "bread" and "raisins". Traditional industries are becoming increasingly difficult to operate, while high-tech industries represented by artificial intelligence are gaining momentum. He shared with everyone the logic behind entering the high-tech industry.

Entrepreneurs’ thinking needs to change. The traditional thinking is revenue, cost, profit, transformation, upgrading, becoming bigger and stronger. The thinking of technology-based enterprises is: entrance thinking, channel thinking, ecological thinking, and platform thinking. The way business is run must also change. Traditional companies believe that products are king, while new companies believe that models are king and users are king.

Among the many artificial intelligence products, Mr. Zhang Qing’s categories are: traffic-draining products, membership-based products, redemption-based products, sticky products, extensible products, and combination products. For example, membership-based products help companies create the smart modules they need, as well as extended products, such as face-swiping phones, iPhones, etc.

Mr. Zhang Qing also shared his views on the pricing of artificial intelligence products. For example, the pricing characteristics of popular products are excellent quality and extremely low prices. Mr. Zhang Qing has his own unique insights into the research on the productization of artificial intelligence.

The above is the main content shared by all the guests of the "Ultra HD and VR Technology Forum" of the AI Tech sub-forum. On the 31st, Leifeng.com will bring a review of the main contents of the Artificial Intelligence and Security Forum and the Artificial Intelligence Investment Forum, so stay tuned.

Lei Feng Net