THIRA was a collaborative project led by the BBC and co-funded by InnovateUK (Technology Strategy Board) which addressed usage of larger resolution video formats. This trend in video content production and display can push video traffic to unmanageable levels unless more efficient compression techniques are brought to bear. The project led the way towards the development of fast and high efficient video compression solutions, such as the Turing codec.
Project from 2013 - 2015
What we are doing
High definition content is an integral part of global broadcasting, setting the standard for streaming, satellite, cable and terrestrial transmissions. More importantly, it generates extremely large amounts of data that need to be delivered to a large number of users. The distribution of media is therefore only possible by the application of compression systems that reduce the size of content sufficiently to be stored and distributed on a mass scale. Continuing this trend and exploiting complex breakthroughs in compression technology, the HEVC standard provides a base for handling very high resolution content. Underpinning the capabilities of HEVC are computationally expensive, extremely complex and resource demanding algorithms. The main objective of this project was to research and develop economically viable, i.e., resource constrained, technology for very high definition content handling. The goal was to facilitate storage and transmission of the huge amounts of data contained in very high resolution content, paving a way for the provision of much greater quality of experience, facilitating quick deployment in a variety of important applications and sectors.
The main output of the THIRA project has become the base for the Turing codec, an open source HEVC encoder.
Why it matters
Consumers are demanding higher definition and improved content fidelity. Services which make use of these UHD formats need high efficiency video compression, such as that enabled by the HEVC standard, given its better coding efficiency compared to its predecessors. The higher coding efficiency of HEVC is achieved by means of powerful coding tools, which on the other hand result in an increased computational complexity of the encoding. THIRA researched and delivered ways to drastically reduce the complexity of HEVC encoding while still maintaining the high qualities and compression efficiency promised by the HEVC standard, paving the way for distribution of content in UHD formats.
Outcomes
The main output of the THIRA project has now become the Turing codec, an open source HEVC encoder. Please visit www.turingcodec.org for more details.
