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Press Release: For immediate release
Contact Iraj Sodagar, Peter Schelkens (pr@jpeg.org)
July 16, 2010, Brussels, Belgium

Publication of JPSearch Query Format and JPEG XR software

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a Working Group of ISO/IEC, the International Organisation for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission, (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC29/WG 1) and of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG16), responsible for the
popular JPEG, JPEG 2000 and more recently, the JPSearch and JPEG XR families of imaging standards. The WG1 group meets nominally three times a year, in Europe, North America and Asia.

The latest meeting was held on July 12-16, 2010 in Brussels, hosted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT) and the Belgian National Body.

The story of JPEG standardization history and the JPEG compression technology were broadcasted on June 10, 2010, in the program IT White-Box, via the NHK educational channel, in Japan. The program reviews various IT technologies for the general public. In that episode, the contribution of the JPEG standard to the digital camera market was highlighted. Members of SC29/WG1 in Japan helped to create the program.

JPEG Innovations has initiated a workshop to explore together with potential stakeholders of emerging imaging applications, opportunities for new JPEG standards such as stereoscopic digital camera. The workshop will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb. 23, 2011, during the 54th WG1
meeting, with invited speakers from industry and academia in various areas including: stereoscopic, multi-view imaging, multi-sensor, wide dynamic range, and light field imaging. JPEG Innovations is chartered to increase awareness of JPEG family of standards, to identify, explore and investigate new image related standard topics, to engage with industry and academia to hold workshops and seminars on these areas and raise the momentum for starting new standardization work items. All interested parties are invited to collaborate with JPEG Innovations by contacting the chair, Dr. Touradj Ebrahimi at innovations@jpeg.org.

JPEG announces the successful completion of the final approval process for JPEG XR conformance testing (ISO/IEC 29199-4) and JPEG XR reference software (ISO/IEC 29199-5) as ISO/IEC International Standards. JPEG is also pleased to announce that the formal publication of the second edition of the JPEG XR image coding specification by ITU-T has been completed, and the standard is available for free to the general public as ITU-T Recommendation T.832 (at http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-T.832). JPEG additionally announces the formal publication of the JPEG XR reference software by ITU-T, which is available for free to the general public as ITU-T Recommendation T.835 (at http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-T.835). The formal publication and  ublic availability of the improved new edition of the JPEG XR image coding standard and the example encoder and reference decoder software will greatly facilitate the deployment of JPEG XR technology in a broad variety of applications. The JPEG XR conformance testing specification is also available from ITU-T in "pre-published" form at http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-T.834, with the JPEG XR conformance test set available for free to the general public at: http://www.itu.int/net/itu-t/sigdb/speimage/ImageForm-s.aspx?val=10100834.

The Digital Cinema (DC) subgroup continued its work on additional frame rates for Digital Cinema and Archival applications. This amendment enables the determination of the data size of the compressed bit stream from the predefined bit rate and allows a wider range of frame rates. The ISO SC29 WG1 committee sees a wider adoption of JPEG 2000 profiles especially in the postproduction/mastering of movies. It appreciates the integration of JPEG 2000 profiles into the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) draft specification published by the Entertainment Technology
Centre.

The broadcast application subgroup has finished the work on the new amendment for broadcast profiles. The amendment is now in the publication process. Together with WG11, a mechanism is defined to transmit JPEG 2000 codestreams over MPEG-2 transport streams. First  interoperability tests are planned within the Video Services Forum in October 2010.

The committee draft of the JPSearch reference software (ISO/IEC 24800-6, JPSearch Part 6) was produced at this meeting. It provides the first set of libraries and software in support of the various use cases of the JPSearch framework. A demo can be found at http://dmag.ac.upc.edu/standardization/jpeg/demo-broker/. Furthermore, a preliminary call for JPSearch Metadata Registration Authority was issued at this meeting. The JPSearch Metadata Registration Authority is one of the most important entities in JPSearch framework to support the
concept of metadata exchange and social tagging. The JPSearch Metadata Registration Authority will allow registration and download of metadata schemes and translation rules.

The Advanced Image Coding and Evaluation Methodologies subgroup (ISO/IEC 29170 - AIC) continues its effort in defining common guidelines for the evaluation of image coding technologies. The committee will publish a technical report (TR), which includes recommendations on quality
assessment, complexity and functionality evaluation and also application dependent methodologies such as for medical, security and camera sensors imaging. AIC will also evaluate the performance of the fast mode of the JPEG 2000 coding standard. JPEG is pleased to announce the production of calls for technologies, use cases, requirement, evaluation procedures and test material for three targeted applications: medical imaging, camera sensors imaging and security applications.

"JPEG is pleased to announce the publication of JPSearch Query Format and progress of JPSearch reference software to Committee Draft status. JPEG welcomes developers to participate in the development of the applications based on JPSearch," said Dr. Daniel Lee of eBay Inc., Convener of the JPEG committee.

The JPEG web site (http://www.jpeg.org) has sponsorship opportunities for all companies involved in developments around JPEG. The marketing departments of interested companies should contact the webmaster, Richard Clark (webmaster@jpeg.org), for this high-traffic site.

The next WG 1 Meeting (53rd) will be held in Guangzhou, China, hosted by the Chinese National Body, October 11 - 15, 2010.
More information about JPEG and its work is available at www.jpeg.org or by contacting Iraj Sodagar and Peter Schelkens, the JPEG PR ad hoc group at pr@jpeg.org.