Richard Clark to lead new work item on JPEG Systems and JPEG-XR

IST/37's chairman, Richard Clark, was been asked to lead the new work item on JPEG Systems by the international JPEG committee at their meeting in Lausanne in July 2007.

The work is currently a 'New Work Item Proposal' (NP), and has been sent for ballot to all the SC29 P-members, with an expected ballot result date of early October 2007.  The work arose from an ad hoc group chaired by Richard, which was set up at the previous JPEG meeting in San Jose, California, in March 2007.  This was set up to discuss a proposal to adopy Microsoft's HD Photo technology, as delivered as an integral part on Window's Vista, as a new JPEG standard.  In Lausanne, it was agreed to progress this work, under the title JPEG-XR (for eXtended Range).

"I am very excited at the positive press reaction to the launch of this initiative" says Richard.  "We have a lot of work to do, integrating the original Microsoft proposals into a new series of standards, which will provide users with better integration between existing and new standards, and should allow the digital imaging industry to move to another generation of imaging technology.  I hope that we can take the techniques and technology we have developed within JPEG, and in particular for JPEG 2000, and use them to produce practical solutions that will improve the quality of the digital imaging experince for everyone".

The work is scheduled to start at the Kobe (Japan) meeting of JPEG, in November 2007, and an optimistic and rapid timescale is being proposed for this development.  Microsoft are promoting the work heavily, and it is hoped that it will enable camera, monitor and printer manufacturers to move to a well standardised new platform, offering higher levels of picture fidelity to their users.  As part of the initiative, JPEG have persuaded Microsoft to offer all their relevant patents to the committee for this standard without payment of fees, in line with the policy adopted for baseline versions of the original JPEG standard and JPEG 2000.

August 2007