JVET-K0001 JVET AHG report: Project management (AHG1) [J.-R. Ohm, G. J. Sullivan]

This document reports on the work of the JVET ad hoc group on Project Management, including an overall status report on the VVC standardization project and the progress made during the interim period since the preceding meeting.

In the interim period since the 10th JVET meeting, work towards finalizing the following (13) documents had been performed:

• JVET-J1001 Versatile Video Coding specification text (Draft 1)
• JVET-J1002 Algorithm description for Versatile Video Coding and Test Model 1 (VTM 1)
• JVET-J1003 Report of results from the Call for Proposals on Video Compression with Capability beyond HEVC
• JVET-J1005 Methodology and reporting template for tool testing
• JVET-J1010, JVET-J1011, and JVET-J1012 JVET common test conditions and software reference configurations for SDR, HDR/WCG, and 360° video
• JVET-J1021 through JVET-J1033, Description of Core Experiments 1 through 13

The work of the JVET overall had proceeded well in the interim period with a huge number of input documents submitted to the current meeting. Intense discussion had been carried out on the group email reflector, and all but one output documents from the preceding meeting had been produced.

Except as noted below (see also section 2.4.3), output documents from the preceding meeting had been made available at the "Phenix" site (http://phenix.it-sudparis.eu/jvet/) or the ITU-based JCT-VC site (http://wftp3.itu.int/av-arch/jvet-site/2018_04_J_SanDiego/), particularly including the following:

• The meeting report (JVET-J1000) [Posted 2018-07-10]
• Versatile Video Coding (Draft 1) (JVET-J1001) [Posted 2018-05-09]
• Algorithm description for Versatile Video Coding and Test Model 1 (VTM 1) (JVET-J1002) [Posted 2018-05-09]
• Methodology and reporting template for tool testing (JVET-J1010) [Posted 2018-04-25]
• JVET common test conditions and software reference configurations (JVET-J1010) [Posted 2018-04-24]
• JVET common test conditions and evaluation procedures for HDR/WCG video (JVET-J1011) [Posted 2018-05-02]
• JVET common test conditions and evaluation procedures for 360° video (JVET-J1012) [Posted 2018-04-28]
• Description of CE 1..13 (JVET-J1021..33) [Posted 2018-04-20]

One planned output document, the Report of results from the Call for Proposals on Video Compression with Capability beyond HEVC (JVET-J1003), had not been finalized as anticipated, due to difficulty obtaining correct versions of the necessary graphs of the test results. It was anticipated that this CfP results report would be finalized in the interim period before the next (October) meeting of JVET, and its lack of current availability was deemed not to be a critical issue.

The thirteen ad hoc groups had made progress, and reports from those activities had been submitted.

Software integration of the VTM and BMS was finalized approximately according to the plan.

Various problem reports relating to asserted bugs in the software, draft specification text, and reference encoder description had been submitted to an informal "bug tracking" system. That system is not intended as a replacement of our ordinary contribution submission process. However, the bug tracking system was considered to have been helpful to the software coordinators and text editors. The bug tracker reports had been automatically forwarded to the group email reflector, where the issues were discussed – and this was reported to have been helpful.

It was foreseen to migrate software distribution as well as bug tracking to GitLab after the current meeting. So far, SVN had been used in the interest of making the software available in a timely fashion.

More than 400 input contributions to the current meeting (not counting the AHG reports) had been registered for consideration at the meeting. Most of these relate to Core Experiments.

Based on studies done in AHG 3, a basic summary of the bit-rate savings (PSNR-based CTC BD-Rate) achieved in the work on VVC, relative to the HM16.18 HEVC reference software (with 10 bit encoding) is as shown in the table below for the random access case:

Random Access Configuration Comparison

It was noted that there have been various discussions on how to manage the project work and structure its results. Since the VVC project was just formally launched at the previous meeting, the current meeting was be a good opportunity to establish and refine working practices for the effort.

• It was noted that a multi-company contribution JVET-K0263 advocated for the document text structure to be somewhat different from what was previously done for AVC and HEVC, by splitting the design of the standard into multiple documents that are developed together.
• Another multi-company contribution JVET-K0311 advocated for an approach to interoperability point signalling for VVC with finer granularity than in past efforts, based on subsets of profiles & levels defined by JVET in the VVC specification and using a non-normative user-registered sub-profile indicator.
• Another aspect of project management that became evident in the interim work on core experiments was how to manage the need to use two different reference configurations in experiment comparisons, i.e., the VTM and BMS.
• Potential approaches to project management that have been discussed recently in the parent bodies and among the management have included external profiling, switchable fall-back modes, the priority of the proponent of an adopted feature in the work on subsequent refinement of the feature design, coordinated development of multiple “modular” standards for aspects previously all specified in the same document, multiple phases of profile development, avoiding inheritance of technology “by default” across generations, and voluntary expressions of licensing timelines in proposal rights declarations.

These and other aspects of project management were suggested to be considered in the parent bodies and JVET, as appropriate, at the current meeting. See section 11 for further discussion of these topics.

A preliminary basis for the document subject allocation and meeting notes for the 11th meeting had been circulated to the participants by being uploaded to the ITU-hosted ftp site that is routinely used for that purpose.