US Leadership Key in Development of New International Video Coding Standard

INCITS
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US Leadership Key in Development of New International Video Coding Standard
INCITS' Contributed Technical Input from Vendors and Consumers in the US

Washington, D.C. May 27, 2002 - "Consumers will receive higher quality video faster and at lower cost as a result of the draft international Video Coding Standard that was just announced by the Joint Video Team (JVT)," said Pete Schirling, Chair of the US Technical Committee that contributed the US position. The US Technical Committee is L3.1, a group of vendor and IT-user experts who develop standards on "Coding of Audio, Picture, Multimedia, and Hypermedia Information" under the rules and processes of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS). Schirling also serves as the US Head of Delegation to the international committee of video coding experts known as WG 11 (MPEG). This pending international standard on compression performance is being developed jointly with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Schirling, who is part of IBM's Research Division devoted to Digital Media Standards, continued, "As the Chair of the US Technical Advisory Group to WG 11, I am very proud of the key technical and leadership contributions made by the members of the US Committee. It is only through international standardization that the expertise brought together in the JVT will be fully utilized. Many hurdles remain for the JVT, but INCITS will continue to enable progress with input from the US and I am confident that all the objectives of the JVT will be met or even exceeded."

Working in complement with the JVT, other experts, including members of INCITS, have already begun the work needed to deliver the new video standard over existing digital TV signals (MPEG-2) and Internet video (MPEG-4).

In its announcement, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) noted that the standard will be identified both as ITU-T Rec. H.264 and ISO/IEC 14496-10 "Advanced Video Coding."

About NCITS
The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) is the venue of choice for information technology developers, producers and users for the creation and maintenance of formal IT standards. INCITS is accredited by, and operates under rules approved by, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). These rules are designed to ensure that voluntary standards are developed by the consensus of directly and materially affected interests. Contact: INCITS Secretariat, Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC), 1250 Eye St. NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005 (www.incits.org).