Video Coding: Predictions Are Hard to Make, Especially about the Future

The goal of this paper is to discuss how current trends in video acquisition, display and applications may impact video compression technology. We start by discussing some of these key trends, and in particular the challenges posed by scaling (increased frame resolutions) and the need for flexible access to complex datasets. Then we provide an overview of the recent evolution of video compression, with a particular focus on recently developed standards, such as H.264/AVC, and identify important factors that have contributed to performance improvements in the last decade. This allows us to identify several areas in which further gains in compression performance may be hard to achieve with current design techniques. Based on this, we propose areas of future research with a common focus on temporal coding tools.