Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Section on the Joint Call for Proposals on Video Compression With Capability Beyond HEVC

Standardization for digital video compression has shown significant evolution over the last three decades. Starting in 1988 with ITU-T H.261 as the first such standard that was practical for consumer use, ISO/IEC MPEG-1 and H.262/MPEG-2 video (the latter jointly standardized by ITU-T and ISO/IEC) were developed very soon thereafter, creating the first wave of broad usage of digital technology in consumer video, such as broadcast and disc player applications. Later, the H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) standard was again developed jointly by ITU-T and ISO/IEC experts, with its High Profile becoming dominant from 2004 in HD broadcast and storage, as well as network-based streaming services and private capture of video. With ever-increasing demands for higher quality and the advent of flat-panel displays, the H.265/MPEG-H High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard became the next generation of video compression standard; with its first version defined in 2013, HEVC has been especially instrumental for the recent deployment of Ultra High Definition (UHD, a.k.a. 4K video). As time has moved forward, video content has continued to become an increasing presence in our lives, with an ever-growing diversification of usage models and continuing demands for higher quality. For example, flat panels evolved towards support of high dynamic range (HDR) video with a wider color gamut, and new modalities for consuming video have appeared, such as head-mounted displays (HMDs).