Subject: [video-codec] WG Action: Formed Internet Video Codec (netvc)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 May 2015 12:16:39 -0700

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Real-time Applications
and Infrastructure Area. For additional information please contact the
Area Directors or the WG Chairs.

Internet Video Codec (netvc)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Proposed WG

Chairs:
  Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
  Mo Zanaty <[email-masked]>

Assigned Area Director:
  Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>

Mailing list
  Address: [email-masked]
  To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec
  Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/

Charter:

Objectives

This WG is chartered to produce a high-quality video codec that meets the
following conditions:

1. Is competitive (in the sense of having comparable or better
performance) with current video codecs in widespread use.

2. Is optimized for use in interactive web applications.

3. Is viewed as having IPR licensing terms that allow it to be widely
implemented and deployed.

To elaborate, this video codec will need to be commercially interesting
to implement by being competitive with the video codecs in widespread use
at the time it is finalized.

This video codec will need to be optimized for the real-world conditions
of the public, best-effort Internet. It should include, but may not be
limited to, the ability to support fast and flexible congestion control
and rate adaptation, the ability to quickly join broadcast streams and
the ability to be optimized for captures of content typically shared in
interactive communications.

The objective is to produce a video codec that can be implemented,
distributed, and deployed by open source and closed source software as
well as implemented in specialized hardware.

The working group shall heed the preference stated in BCP 79: "In
general, IETF working groups prefer technologies with no known IPR claims
or, for technologies with claims against them, an offer of royalty-free
licensing." In keeping with this BCP, the WG will prefer algorithms or
tools where there are verifiable reasons to believe they are available on
an royalty-free (RF) basis. In developing the codec specification, the WG
may consider information concerning old prior art or the results of
research indicating royalty-free availability of particular techniques.
Note that the preference stated in BCP 79 cannot guarantee that the
working group will produce an IPR unencumbered codec.

Process

The core technical considerations for such a codec include, but are not
necessarily limited to, the following:

1. High compression efficiency that is competitive with existing popular
video codecs.

2. Reasonable computational complexity that permits real-time operation
on existing, popular hardware, including mobile devices, and efficient
implementation in new hardware designs.

3. Use in interactive real-time applications, such as point-to-point
video calls, multi-party video conferencing, telepresence, teleoperation,
and in-game video chat.

4. Resilient in the real-world transport conditions of the Internet, such
as the flexibility to rapidly respond to changing bandwidth availability
and loss rates, etc.

5. Integratable with common Internet applications and Web APIs (e.g., the
HTML5 <video> tag and WebRTC API, live streaming, adaptive streaming, and
common media-related APIs) without depending on any particular API.

The working group will consider the impacts its decisions have on the
efficiency of transcoding to and from other existing video codecs.

Non-Goals

It is explicitly not a goal of the working group to produce a codec that
will be mandated for implementation across the entire IETF or Internet
community.

Based on the working group's analysis of the design space, the working
group might determine that it needs to produce a codec with multiple
modes of operation. The WG may produce a codec that is highly
configurable, operating in many different modes with the ability to
smoothly be extended with new modes in the future.

Collaboration

In completing its work, the working group will seek cross-WG review with
other relevant IETF working groups, including PAYLOAD, RMCAT, RTCWEB,
MMUSIC, and other IETF WGs that make use of or handle negotiation of
codecs. The WG will liaise with groups in other SDOs, such as the W3C
HTML, Device APIs and WebRTC working groups; ITU-T (Study group 16);
ISO/IEC (JTC1/SC29 WG11); 3GPP (SA4); and JCT-VC.

It is expected that an open source reference version of the codec will be
developed in parallel with the working group's work.

Deliverables

1. A set of technical requirements and evaluation criteria. The WG may
choose to pursue publication of these in an RFC if it deems that to be
beneficial.

2. Proposed Standard specification of an encoded bit stream and decoder
operation where the normative formats and algorithms are described in
English text and not as code.

3. Source code for a reference implementation (documented in an
informational document) that includes both an encoder and a decoder.

4. Specification of a storage format for file transfer of the encoded
video as an elementary stream compatible with existing, popular container
formats to support non-interactive (HTTP) streaming, including live
encoding and both progressive and large-chunk downloads. The WG will not
develop a new container format.

5. A collection of test results, either from tests conducted by the
working group or made publicly available elsewhere, characterizing the
performance of the codec. 

Milestones:
  Jul 2016 - Requirements and evaluation criteria to IESG, if the WG so
chooses (Informational)
  May 2017 - Submit codec specification to IESG (Standards Track)
  May 2017 - Submit reference implementation to IESG (Informational)
  May 2017 - Submit storage format specification to IESG (Standards
Track)
  Dec 2017 - Test result document to IESG, if the WG so chooses
(Informational)