Abstract: Digital video codecs have transformed media distribution and communications during the last decades. Video streaming is one of more recent applications of media transmission; it currently accounts for a significant part, if not the majority, of internet traffic. Media distribution and communications require interoperability between formats used by multiple content providers, hardware manufacturers, and device vendors, which makes video coding standards an essential part of today’s media infrastructure. Despite recent advances in applying machine learning techniques for compression of video, new video coding standards are still primarily based on traditional architecture that uses block-based motion compensation, followed by transforms and entropy coding.

The presentation will discuss recent advances in video codec standards and reasons why the traditional block-based architecture is still widely used by standard development organizations. Then, we will look in two video compression tools in more detail, namely, film grain synthesis, which is a part of the AV1 video codec, and a new deblocking filter used in the AOMedia Video Model (AVM), the codebase used by the Alliance for Open Media in its research on video compression beyond AV1. 

Bio: Andrey Norkin is a co-chair of the Alliance for Open Media's Video Codec Working Group. He actively contributed to the development of the AV1 video codec and is currently working on video compression technologies beyond AV1. Currently, he works as a Research Scientist at Netflix and has been involved in development of encoding techniques for OTT video streaming. Previously, at Ericsson, he contributed to ITU-T and MPEG efforts on developing the HEVC video codec and worked on video encoder products. Andrey holds the Doctor of Science degree in signal processing from Tampere University of Technology, Finland.