The amount of video content traffic on the Internet is rapidly increasing at an annual rate of 31%, accounting for 73% of total bandwidth, including non-video content. Furthermore, with the recent development of IoT (Internet of Things) and AI technologies, M2M (Machine to Machine) communications, in which non-human operators receive and process video, such as AI video surveillance, is increasing at an annual rate of 19% and is expected to reach 14.7 billion connections by 2023. It is obvious that without video compression technology, not only video services but also communication services in general would fail. Continuous research and development of more efficient video compression technology is indispensable for the sustainable development of telecommunication services. The awardees have been engaged in research and development of highly efficient video coding technologies, international standardization, practical application, and dissemination activities at NTT Laboratories from 1996 to the present and have continuously and energetically contributed to the development of this field.

Regarding standardization, inter-frame prediction technology was granted a patent essential to the international standard MPEG-4 (1) (Fig. 1) and was made into LSI by various companies, enabling long-time transmission and reception of video images on mobile terminals, opening up a completely new video culture of “mobile personal communication”. Intra-frame prediction technologies (2~5) (Fig. 2) were granted patents essential to the international standard MPEG-H HEVC and its successor MPEG-I VVC. In particular, HEVC’s high performance has enabled the new 4K/8K satellite broadcasting service, and its use is spreading worldwide for video recording and streaming on smartphones, etc. Together with the previous standard MPEG-4/AVC, 10 billion standard-compliant terminals were in use by 2020, compressing 90% of the world's video data. VVC is also being promoted by the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF), and several real-time 4K codecs have been announced.

Regarding practical applications, the local Lagrange multiplier optimization technique (6, 7) is a general-purpose technology that avoids the explosion of countless parameter combinations in video compression and enables high-speed and high-efficiency compression by adjusting only a very small number of parameters (3 parameters for the entire video). For this reason, it is a core technology for encoding optimization that can be indispensable in the future. It is universally used in reference software developed simultaneously with the creation of international standards, as well as in third-party software and hardware, for professional and consumer, and commercial and non-commercial encoders.

Regarding dissemination activities, the awardees have coordinated more than 570 standard ballot proposals, including MPEG-H HEVC, written explanatory articles, and organized seminars as the Head of Delegation (HoD) of Japan, chairperson of the domestic technical committee, and secretary of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29, which is in charge of JPEG/MPEG standardization. The awardees have also co-edited a textbook (8) that has been widely acclaimed by engineers and students and has been a strong driving force in the establishment and dissemination of the standard. They have also contributed to the development of this field by giving numerous standard technical lectures, writing explanatory articles (9), and presiding over international coding competitions.

Video communication today cannot be realized without both standardized compression technology with high basic performance and advanced encoding optimization technology to realize such performance. The contributions of the awardees to this field have been recognized as extremely significant, including with 84 corporate, academic, and national awards, 304 presentations at seminars, etc., and 558 domestic and foreign patent applications (360 granted, 16 recognized as essential to standards), making them worthy of the Achievement Award.

References

1. A. Shimizu, H. Jozawa, K. Kamikura, H. Watanabe, A. Sagata and S. Takamura, “Motion vector predictive encoding and decoding method using prediction of motion vector of target block based on representative motion vector,” US patent 9154789, granted Oct. 2015 (one of MPEG-4 essential patents)
2. S. Matsuo, S. Takamura, K. Kamikura and Y. Yashima, “Image encoding device and decoding device, image encoding method and decoding method,” CN patent 101822062, granted Feb. 2013 (one of MPEG-H HEVC essential patents)
3. S. Matsuo, S. Takamura, K. Kamikura and Y. Yashima, “Video encoding method and decoding method, apparatuses therefor, programs therefor, and storage media which store the programs,” US patent 8472522B2, granted June 2013 (an MPEG-I VVC essential patent)
4. S. Matsuo, S. Takamura and Y. Yashima, “Intra prediction with spatial gradient,” Proc. SPIE-IS&T Electronic Imaging, Visual Communication and Image Processing (VCIP) 2009, vol. 7257, pp. 72571R-1-72571R-9, Jan. 2009
5. S. Matsuo, S. Takamura, Y. Yashima, "Intra prediction with spatial gradients and multiple reference lines," Proc. Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) 2009, pp. 1-4, May 2009
6. S. Takamura, “Frame-wise N-pass video clip coding optimization and rate control algorithm,” Proc. Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) 2001, pp.171-174, Apr. 2001
7. S. Takamura and N. Kobayashi, “A study on iterative video coding rate-distortion optimization and its rate control,” IEICE Trans. Information and Systems D-II, Vol. J85-D-II, No. 9, pp.1425-1435, Sep. 2002
8. S. Matsuo, S. Takamura, et al., “H.265/HEVC Textbook,” Impress, 2013
9. Y. Bandoh, “Latest trends in international standardization of video coding technologies,” IEICE ESS Fundamentals Review, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 186-196, Jan. 2014