The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), an international committee headed by an EPFL professor, has just unveiled JPEG XS. A new time of higher amounts of content consumption - and the ways we consume it - requires a new way to send its data. With this new format, the image-compression process uses less energy, and higher-quality images can be sent with low latency over broadband networks like 5G. JPEG XS will have applications in areas such as virtual reality, augmented reality, space imagery, self-driving cars and professional movie editing.

Headed by Touradj Ebrahimi, a professor in EPFL's School of Engineering (STI), the JPEG XS format was essentially designed to stream live video and VR - it's not a replacement to JPEG, and file-sizes will actually end up being slightly bigger. The big push with this format is lower compression and decompression latency, as well as energy efficiency of the decompression process itself. The fact that it's open source and has a universal HDR coding format also means that its uptake should be relatively high.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS announces its first JPEG XS codec implementation for video production at the NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 9-12 2018. The coding specialists of Fraunhofer IIS will demonstrate the JPEG XS codec as an input format for post-production in a software plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CC with real-time playback capability of 4k60p UHD video.

With ever-increasing amounts of data from higher resolution and dynamic range in videos, long-distance transmission from coax cables in studios will soon become outdated. At the same time, production companies and studios are trying to substitute specialized cables and switches for video transmission by commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components with the introduction of simple and cost-effective IP transmission over standard Ethernet infrastructures.