Very low bit rate video coding standards

Very low bit rate video coding has received considerable attention in academia and industry in terms of both coding algorithms and standards activities. In addition to the earlier ITU-T efforts on H.320 standardization for video conferencing from 64 kbps to 1.544 Mbps in ISDN environment, the ITU-T/SG15 has formed an expert group on low bit coding (LBC) for visual telephone below 64 kbps. The ITU-T/SG15/LBC work consists of two phases: the near-term and long-term. The near-term standard H.32P/N, based on existing compression technologies, mainly addresses the issues related to visual telephony at below 28.8 kbps, the V.34 modem rate used in the existing Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). H.32P/N will be technically frozen in January '95. The long-term standard H.32P/L, relying on fundamentally new compression technologies with much improved performance, will address video telephony in both PSTN and mobile environment. The ISO/SG29/WG11, after its highly visible and successful MPEG 1/2 work, is starting to focus on the next- generation audiovisual multimedia coding standard MPEG 4. With the recent change of direction, MPEG 4 intends to provide an audio visual coding standard allowing for interactivity, high compression, and/or universal accessibility, with high degree of flexibility and extensibility. This paper briefly summarizes these on-going standards activities undertaken by ITU-T/LBC and ISO/MPEG 4 as of December 1994.