Press Release       For immediate release
Contact Richard Clark / Lou Sharpe (pr@jpeg.org) Cupertino, March 13-17, 2006

Digital Movies Distribution Using JPEG 2000 Well Adopted, JPSEC Enables Secure Management of Images

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a working group of ISO, the International  Organisation for Standardization, (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG1) and of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG16), responsible for the popular JPEG and, more recently, the JPEG 2000 family of imaging standards. This group meets three times a year, in Europe, North America and Asia. The latest meeting was held March 13-17, in Cupertino, California, hosted by Hewlett-Packard Company, with delegates from 12 countries.

Work progressed on a variety of technologies within the JPEG 2000 family of standards. Taken together, these building blocks make up a next generation platform for network-enabled imaging, with the JP2 file destined to become the general imaging format of choice.

The Digital Cinema (DC) ad hoc group within the JPEG committee is very active and successful in seeing their work adopted in the industry. ISO published the amendment to Part 1 of JPEG 2000 containing profiles for digital cinema applications. Compliance testing work has begun. In a key development, the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI - www.dcimovies.com) organization has adopted JPEG 2000 for future distribution of digital movies to theatres (see their Press Release at http://www.dcimovies.com/press/07-27-05.tt2). The JPEG committee is working closely with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) to standardize aspects of this future architecture.

ISO published Amendment 1 to ISO15444-1:2004 (the JPEG2000 standard) which handles the specific needs of digital cinema.  The JPEG2000 amendment features two profiles specifically targeted to Digital Cinema applications.  The profiles feature scalable support of high quality 2K and 4K motion imagery.  JPEG is pleased to announce the publication of the amendment, which can now be used for the development of equipment and further standards.

At the Cupertino meeting, the ad hoc group started work on a new amendment to contain additional profiles covering future applications in DC such as archiving and post-production with encryption and security features. They are studying user requirements for these new applications. The first movie using the DCI specifications was screened in 100 theatres in November 2005. It was Serenity from Universal Pictures. More than 300 theatres are currently equipped for digital cinema with more to be added during 2006.

The JPM standard is Part 6 of JPEG 2000, a file format for document images incorporating multiple layered compression formats. The JPM ad hoc group continued work on Amendment 1 to incorporate a method for including Hidden Text XML data (HTX) to store OCR results in a JPM file. A technical corrigendum was begun to correct minor errors and ambiguities in the published standard.

The JPSEC standard addresses security services for JPEG 2000 images and thus jointly addresses security and media compression in a single specification. This combination allows protected images to retain all the JPEG 2000 system features such as scalability, JPIP network browsing, simple transcodability and progression to lossless. JPSEC offers exciting opportunities for secure global distribution and e-commerce for digital images, allowing storage of partially or fully encrypted content, while still retaining the ability to adaptively deliver content for a wide variety of devices with varying display capabilities.

The JPSEC ad hoc group for Part 8 of the JPEG 2000 standard has efforts underway to extend the JPSEC tools and techniques to the file format level and to specify compliance and interoperability guidelines for different implementations of JPSEC creators and consumers. JPSEC has introduced two amendments for these purposes and produced two working drafts at the Cupertino meeting.

The JPIP standard allows powerful and efficient network access to JPEG 2000 images and their metadata in a way that exploits the best features of the JPEG 2000 standard. The standard is finalized as Part 9 of JPEG 2000. Interoperability testing is in the formative stages and new organizations developing JPIP are encouraged to participate. For more information please contact jpip@jpeg.org.

The JP3D Ad hoc group working on extension of JPEG 2000 to three-dimensional images such as Computer Tomography (CT) scans or scientific simulations stepped up its activities at the meeting. Their document, Part 10 of JPEG 2000, is at the Working Draft level and the group is looking for input to assist in defining basic and advanced profiles, especially from the medical imaging community. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel-IBBT has produced reference software based on the current working draft and this will be released as VM1.0 on 15 April 2006. A volumetric data image test set has been assembled. Core experiments are being planned. Working Draft 6.0 of JP3D has been released at this meeting. Coordination work with the JPIP ad hoc group continues aimed at allowing access to JP3D images over a network.

The JPWL standard supports wireless applications of JPEG 2000. JPEG 2000 Part 11, Wireless - JPWL, has now reached the stage of Final Draft International Standard. JPWL has standardised tools and methods to achieve the efficient transmission of JPEG 2000 imagery over an error-prone wireless system. More specifically, JPWL extends the elements in the core coding system described in Part 1 with mechanisms for error protection and correction. These extensions can be used in bit error or packet loss contexts and they are backwards compatible in the sense that decoders which implement Part 1 are able to skip the extensions defined in JPWL.

The JPWL ad hoc group has begun work on reference software and on compliance testing issues. University of Perugia has release an open-source reference software based on the OpenJPEG library. This is being used to create test bitstreams using various JPWL modes as a starting point for compliance testing.

JPEG 2000 Part 13, defining a royalty and license fee free entry level JPEG 2000 encoder with widespread applications, is at Committee Draft stage. A call to WG1 members and others to reconfirm their Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) statements has been issued. The JPEG committee has always taken the view that open, license-fee free and royalty-fee free standards are the key to success in the marketplace and proved this principle with the original JPEG baseline standard. A Final Committee Draft is expected at the Perugia meeting in July 2006.

The Requirements ad hoc group met to discuss Advanced Image Coding (AIC) in Cupertino. A revised version of AIC scope and requirements was produced and a preliminary call for AIC evaluation methodologies has been released.

The library and archive community continues to increase its interest in and support for JPEG 2000. The IS&T Archiving Conference in Ottawa in May, 2006 will have several sessions on JPEG 2000.

Early work on JPSearch (ISO 24800, Still Image Search) continued. This effort aims to develop a standard framework for searching large collections of images by a variety of criteria.  The JPSearch specifications will provide a core set of technologies and address issues of image metadata so that individual implementers can create interoperable image search systems. Currently, JPSearch will be a multi-part standard. Part 1 will be a Technical Report. A whitepaper also will be developed which will show motivations for JPSearch and its relevance to industry.

The DICOM medical imaging standard has finalized Supplement 106, dealing with the inclusion of JPIP for remote browsing of medical images compressed using JPEG 2000.

Several presentations were given at the Cupertino meeting.

• " Picture quality requirements and NUT proposals for JPEG AIC, Dr. Jae-Jeong Hwang, Kunsan National Univ., Korea
• " OpenJPEG, Dr. François-Olivier Devaux, UCL, Belgium
• " WCAM Project: Focus on Wireless Transmissions, Dr. François-Olivier Devaux, UCL, Belgium
• " Update to DCinema-Related Projects: EDCINE and WorldScreen, Dr. Siegfried Fössel, Fraunhofer Institute, Germany
  

"We are happy to see the success of JPEG 2000 in Digital Cinema. High-quality digital movies are now a reality. The JPSEC proposal for secure images brings a new dimension to enable trusted e-commerce in and management of images," said Dr. Daniel Lee of Yahoo! Inc., Convener of the JPEG Group.

The JPEG web site (http://www.jpeg.org) has sponsorship opportunities for all companies involved in developments around JPEG. The webmaster, Richard Clark (webmaster@jpeg.org) looks forward to enquiries from the marketing departments of interested companies involved in JPEG 2000 regarding sponsoring and advertising opportunities at this high-traffic site.  The web activities have recently been transferred to a new not for profit organization, JPEG Forum Ltd, so that all revenues will be dedicated to encouraging the activities and publicity of the JPEG committee.

The next, 39th JPEG Meeting will be held in Perugia, Italy, hosted by the Italian National Body, July 10-14, 2006. Information on JPEG 2000 can also be found at www.jpeg.org or by contacting Lou Sharpe, PR Chair at pr@jpeg.org. - END -