Media Links’ John Dale Talks Interoperable WAN/LAN Transport of JPEG-XS Compressed Video

Media Links Chief Marketing Officer John Dale has been chairing the JPEG-XS Activity Group within the Video Services Forum (VSF), supporting industry interoperability. 

JPEG-XS is an ISO/IEC compression standard for low latency, real-time video applications and offers visually lossless quality with low processing complexity. It encodes video imagery within milliseconds and can compress full bandwidth signals by 4X or more. JPEG-XS is applicable to SD, HD, UHD with high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) video content.

The objectives of this VSF JPEG-XS Activity Group have been to create technical recommendations focused on both WAN (Wide Area Network) and LAN (Local Area Network) interoperability applications. The newly announced VSF TR-07 Technical
Recommendation defines profiles for streaming of JPEG-XS video and establishes an interoperable method for transporting that compressed video along with associated audio and ancillary data across WAN networks in an MPEG-2 Transport Stream.  The newly announced TR-08 Technical Recommendation is focused on LAN applications and defines profiles for streaming of JPEG-XS video over SMPTE ST 2110-22 and adds information for the interoperable transport of audio and ancillary data over other relevant SMPTE ST2110 standards.

Both Technical Recommendations define interoperable capability sets which include multiple interoperability points for specific target applications. These applications could include, typical broadcast 2K formats and frame rates, 4K and 8K resolutions including HDR and WCG, as well as multimedia extensions including RGB with 4:4:4 sampling, at both 8 and 12 bit depths.

The VSF is an international association comprised of service providers, users and manufacturers dedicated to interoperability, quality metrics and education for media networking technologies. The organization’s activities include providing forums to identify issues involving the development, deployment, operation, and security of media networking technologies. They also promote interoperability by contributing towards the development of Standards.

JPEG-XS is being implemented in many industry products, and is available in several Media Links offerings, including the MDP3020 MAX IP Media Gateway. MDP3020 MAX supports up to 4 video channels using JPEG-XS compression, which achieves bandwidth reduction ratios of up to 10:1 and beyond, visually lossless quality and sub-millisecond latency. This makes it ideal for the edge of an IP WAN network where bandwidth is typically constrained, where minimal latency is necessary for live interactive remote production broadcasts, and where the transport of uncompressed high quality video is just not feasible. The device can be used in various configurations, either separately or in combination due to its multi-channel capability.

The latest JPEG-XS TR-07 and TR-08 VSF Technical Recommendations can be found at: https://vsf.tv/technical_recommendations.shtml