The Key Technology of Ultra HD Video Polymorphic Primitive Encoding and Decoding won the first prize of the National Technology Invention Award.

Video coding belongs to the field of source coding and is the core supporting technology of the ultra-high-definition video industry such as digital TV and the Internet. Gao Wen, the first person who completed the award-winning project and professor of Peking University, said in an interview that the technology was to compress and encode ultra-high definition video data, transmit it to the user terminal through the network, and then decode and restore the definition.

It is understood that for a long time, China has lacked the international voice of technical standards in this field, and the industry is large but not strong. Gao Wen recounted that in 2002, in the face of the impact of the rising foreign patent royalties and the gradual decline of the domestic DVD industry, The Audio Video Coding Standards Workgroup of China (hereinafter referred to as AVS) led by Peking University was established, dedicated to formulating audio and video codec technology standards with independent intellectual property rights.

The project invented the key technology of ultra-high-definition polymorphic primitive encoding and decoding, broke through the traditional video encoding and computing framework, and formed a completely independent encoding and decoding technology system.

After nearly 20 years of efforts, the project has achieved a series of results: the self-developed ultra-high-definition real-time encoder and decoder chip supported the successful launch of China's first ultra-high-definition channel CCTV-4K, and was used to support the live broadcast of major events such as the military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the Spring Festival Gala of China Media Group 2020.

It is reported that the project has formed a complete industrial chain of "technical standards-chip terminal-system application", and the results have been applied to the products developed by several companies. In the past three years, the cumulative new sales were RMMB 7.109 billion, and the new profits were RMB 1.038 billion, driving the industry scale to nearly RMB 100 billion.

Looking forward to the future, Gao Wen said that this technology has broad application prospects. The combination of ultra-high-definition video supported by audio and video coding technology standards and 5G technology will trigger the changes in wise medical care, intelligent transportation, aerospace exploration, and precision instrument manufacturing. (The end)