An usefull mail about H.264 from Gary Sullivan

The following information about the Joint Video Team (JVT) and its work may be helpful to some of you. [version:]

The primary work of the JVT currently consists:
1) Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension development, and
(2) maintenance of the existing advanced video coding (AVC) Standard ITU-T rec. h. 264 & ISO/IEC 14496-10, e.g ., including errata reporting and maintenance of reference sotware and conformance specifications.

The JVT currently has 3 active email reflectors.

You can subscribe to two of them (the General JVT reflector and the conformance/InterOP bitstream exchange activity reflector) through
Http://mailman.rwth-aachen.de/mailman/listinfo/jvt-experts and
Http://mailman.rwth-aachen.de/mailman/listinfo/jvt-bitstream
Alternatively, you can send email with subject or body 'help'
Jvt-experts-request@lists.rwth-aachen.de.
You can reach the person managing the list
Jvt-experts-owner@lists.rwth-aachen.de or
Jvt-bitstream-owner@lists.rwth-aachen.de.

To subscribe to the 3rd JVT reflector (which is already Ted to SVC work), send email
Majordomo@ient.rwth-aachen.de "containing" subscribe SVC "in the body of the message.

JVT documents can be found
Http://ftp3.itu.int/av-arch/jvt-site
No Password is required for access to nearly all privileges ents on that site. A select few privileges ents (such as integrated-format standard drafts) require password access, using a password given only to formal JVT members.

That document archive can alternatively be accessed by FTP using the same top-level site address (ftp3.itu.int) with the user ID "avguest" and the password "avguest ". this accesses the file system at the same level as the HTTP access point http://ftp3.itu.int/av-arch, so the directory "JVT-site" there contains the JVT document archive (the other directories there are for various ITU-T groups -- Note that "video-site" there is for ITU-T VCEG, not the JVT ). that user ID and password can be considered public information.

The JVT reference software coordination site for non-SVC work is:
Http://iphome.hhi.de/suehring/tml/
No Password is required for access to that site.
That software site does not have ftp access capability.

The JVT reference software access information for SVC work is:

Document JVT-O203 contains the jsvm 2 software. [Busan output, shocould be available * very * soon if not there yet]
Document JVT-N024 contains the jsvm 1 software. [Hong Kong output]
Document JVT-N022 contains the jsvm 0 software. [Hong Kong basis]

A cvs server for the jsvm software has been set up at rwth Aachen, hosted at garcon.ient.rwth-aachen.de. it can be accessed using wincvs or any other CVS client using the "pserver" method, with the user ID "jvtuser" and the password "JVT. amd.2 ". the path is "/CVS/JVT", and the module name is "jsvm ". for example, with a command line client, you can check out the software using the following commands.

& Quot; CVS-D: pserver: jvtuser@garcon.ient.rwth-aachen.de:/CVS/JVT login & quot"
And
"CVS-D: pserver: jvtuser@garcon.ient.rwth-aachen.de:/CVS/JVT Co jsvm"
(You can use "CO" or "checkout ")

The server is configured to allow read access using the above-described jvtuser ID.

Write Access to the SVC software server is restricted to JVT software coordinators Justin Ridge, heiko Schwarz, and Mathias Wien.

Some key current documents of the JVT include:

JVT-O201/n7086 Working Draft 2 of Scalable Video Coding [05/05/20]
JVT-O202/n7084 Joint Scalable Video Model (jsvm) 2 [05/05/20]
JVT-O203/n7085 jsvm 2 software [05/05/20]
JVT-O204/n7083 text of Corr. To ITU-T Rec. H.264 | ISO/IEC 264-10 AVC [14496/13]
JVT-O205/n7081 updated text of ITU-T Rec. H.264 | ISO/IEC 264-10 AVC [14496/20]

The next JVT meeting will be in Poznan Poland. the dates that were preliminarily announced for that meeting were 23-29 July. however, we have decided to postpone the start of the meeting until the 24th. it will end around noon on the 29th. document registrations and uploads shoshould be completed already. if your document has not yet been uploaded, please provide it as soon as possible.

For information about logistics for the upcoming JVT and MPEG meetings in Poznan Poland (meeting location, logistics, hotels, etc.), see
Http://mpeg73.multimedia.edu.pl /.

After the Poznan meeting, the plan for the next two JVT meetings will be to co-locate them with each MPEG meeting (I. E ., 16-21 October in Nice France and 15-20 January in Bangkok Thailand ). that co-location of meetings is expected to continue until the 1st 2006 meeting of ITU-T SG 16, upon which we plan to meet alongside sg16, approximately 12-17 March 2006. we are then likely to return to meeting with MPEG (16-21 July in Klagenfurt Austria and 22-27 October in Hangzhou China ).

The JVT has two parent bodies, which are MPEG (ISO/iec jtc 1/SC 29/WG 11) and VCEG (ITU-T SG 16 Q.6 ). particle operation in the JVT is open to anyone who is qualfied to fig in MPEG or VCEG, and to those personally invited by the Chairmen. we are liberal in granting invitation requests.

To SS the work of the JVT between meetings, the JVT has created the following ad-hoc groups, and has appointed the following listed chairpersons for that work. the discussions involved in the work of those ad-hoc groups will be conducting CTED on the above-listed email reflectors.
1. JVT project management and errata reporting (Gary Sullivan, Jens Rainer ohm, Ajay Luthra, and Thomas Wiegand)
2. jm description and reference software (Thomas Wiegand, Karsten s ühring, Alexis tourapis, and Keng Pang Lim)
3. bitstream exchange and conformance (teruhiko Suzuki and Lowell Winger)
4. SVC core experiments (Justin Ridge, Ulrich benzler)
5. jsvm software improvement and new functionality integration (Greg cook)
6. jsvm text and WD text editing (Julien Reichel, heiko Schwarz, Mathias Wien)
7. Spatial scalability resampling filters (Gary Sullivan)
8. Test Conditions and applications for Error Resilience (Ye Kui Wang)
9. Test Conditions for coding efficiency work and jsvm performance evaluation (Mathias Wien, heiko Schwarz)
10. Study of 4: 4 video coding functionality (teruhiko Suzuki)

In the work on Scalable Video Coding (SVC), the JVT is conducting the following core experiments (CES ). A document describing each of these CES is available on the jvt ftp site in the 2005_04_busan directory as document number JVT-O3xx, where "XX" is the number of the core experiment as listed below. the appointed core experiment coordinator, some participant companies, and some relevant documents (prefix the numbers below by "JVT-O" for the complete document number) are also listed below.
CE1: MCTF memory management (009,026,027,028) (visiowave, Panasonic, Nokia) Julien Reichel
CE2: improved de-blocking filter settings (non-normative ?) (Rwth, ftrd) (067) Mathias Wien
Pushed by coding efficiency of Entropy Coding (skku, etri, Samsung) Woong il Choi, (021,063)
Ce4: Inter-layer Motion Prediction (Samsung, LG) kyohyuk Lee (058)
Ce5: quality layers (ftrd, Nokia,...) (044,055) Isabelle amonou
Ce6: Improvement of update step (015,030,062) (Samsung, msra, Nokia, fhg-HHI) Woo-Jin Han
Ce7: Enhancement-layer intra prediction (Thomson, fhg-HHI, sharp, Huawei, Samsung) (010,053,065) Jill Boyce
Ce8: region of interest (nctu, ICU, etri, i2r) (020) zhongkang Lu
Ce9: Improvement of quantization (046,060,066,069) (ftrd, Panasonic, Siemens, rwth, fhg-HHI, Microsoft, sharp) St é phane pateux
Ce10: Extended spatial Scalability (Thomson, ftrd, sharp, LG) (008,041,042) Edouard Francois
Ce11: Improvement of FGS (055) (Nokia, fhg-HHI, nctu) Justin Ridge
Ce12: weighted prediction from FGS layers (054) (Nokia, visiowave, fhg-HHI) yiliang Bao

On the ISO/IEC side, the standards developed by the JVT are published as part of the ISO/IEC 14496 suite of standards, which is available for purchase:
Http://tinyurl.com/2dgpx

The primary such standard, 14496-10 (2004-09-2 "Information Technology -- Coding of audio-visual objects -- Part 10: Advanced Video Coding", is available for purchase:
Http://tinyurl.com/6dnck

On the ITU-T side, the standards developed by the JVT are published as part of the "h-series" of standards. anyone can get copies of any 3 ITU-T standards per year for free by using the following link:
Http://ecs.itu.ch/cgi-bin/ebookshop

The links to the JVT's standards at ITU-T are as follows:
-------------------------------------------------------------
Title: H.264 (264-03): "Advanced Video Coding for generic audiovisual services"
URL: http://tinyurl.com/62t46
-------------------------------------------------------------
Title: h.264.1 (2005-03): "conformance specification for H.264 advanced video coding"
URL: http://tinyurl.com/5qp7g
-------------------------------------------------------------
Title: h.264.2 (2005-03): "Reference software for H.264 advanced video coding"
URL: http://tinyurl.com/6flcp
-------------------------------------------------------------

Best regards,

Gary Sullivan