Before the Big Bang: Do we need a new video coding standard?

Abstract

The necessity of a new video coding standard has been discussed since 2014. This may be the right time for us to ask ourselves if we need a new codec since we already have a handful of codecs in the market. Standardized in 1992, the JPEG standard has been the most successful standard in the acquisition, archiving, transmission, and display of still pictures. Including JPEG 2000, new image coding standards with performances substantially better than JPEG have appeared. Still, the market has proved that JPEG is the winner no matter what. Can this analogy be extended to video codecs? MPEG and VCEG jointly finished the latest video coding standard for high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) just a year ago. What could the new requirements be if a new video coding standard is necessary when the latest standard HEVC outperforms the existing video coding standards by more than 30% in compression? In this article, I have summarized what the different stakeholders within MPEG, from standards experts to market leaders, believe necessary to initiate a new standardization activity.