Latest advances in video coding technology for next generation communications
Seishi Takamura, Dr. Eng., IEEE Fellow
Senior Distinguished Engineer, NTT Corporation, Japan
APSIPA VP-Industrial Relations and Development, 2020-2021
IEEE Region 10 (Asia Pacific) Strategic Planning & New Initiatives Committee Chair, 2021-2022
IEEE Japan Council Vice Chair, 2021-2022

Abstract
Video contents can be seen wherever we are. Though they are already compressed down to 1/10 - 1/1000 from its original size, they occupy a considerable amount of file storage, network bandwidth and computer memory and other resources. It has been reported that the visual data in Internet protocol (IP) traffic, mobile video traffic accounted for 59% of all worldwide mobile data traffic in 2017 and will be 79% by 2022. IP video traffic accounted for 75% of all worldwide IP traffic in 2017 and will be 82% by 2022. This is why development of better compression technology has been eagerly demanded all time. ITU-T/ISO/IEC jointly developed the latest video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), in 2013. They have started the next generation video coding standard, called Versatile Video Coding (VVC) in April 2018. It was just finalized in July 2020. In this keynote, we first overview the ever-advancing history of video coding technology and standardization activities in the last several decades. Then we review latest standardization activities on video coding, including VVC. Then we further extend to several examples of our new approaches, real-entity-oriented coding in particular, to further enhance visual quality, immersive sensations and natural experience as well as compression performance.

Biography
Dr. Seishi Takamura is a Senior Distinguished Engineer at NTT Corporation. He received a B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, in 1991, 1993, and 1996. His current research interests include efficient video coding and ultrahigh-quality video processing. He has fulfilled various duties in the research and academic community in current and prior roles, including serving as associate editor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (2006–2014), Editor-in-Chief of the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers (ITE), executive committee member of the IEEE Region 10 and Japan Council. He has also served as chair of Japan National Body, and Japan head of delegation of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29. From 2005 to 2006, he was a visiting scientist at Stanford University, CA, USA. He is an inventor of 511 patent applications (331 filed). He has received 56 academic awards including ITE Niwa-Takayanagi Awards (Best Paper in 2002, Achievement in 2017), the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) Nagao Special Researcher Award in 2006, the ITE Fujio Frontier Award in 2014, and the Telecommunications Advancement Foundation (TAF) Telecom System Technology Awards in 2004, 2008, and in 2015 with highest honors, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) 100-Year Memorial Best Paper Award in 2017, the Kenjiro Takayanagi Achievement Award in 2019, and Industrial Standardization Merit Award from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan in 2019. Dr. Takamura is an IEEE Fellow, a senior member of IEICE and IPSJ, and a member of Japan Mensa, the Society for Information Display, and ITE, a Vice President of Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA).