The Picture Coding Symposium (PCS) is hosted and organized by Bristol Vision Institute at the University of Bristol. PCS is the pioneer conference in this area and, since 1969, has provided the most engaging forum for the visual coding community attracting world-leading academics and industrialists. PCS typically attracts industrial and academic experts from across the globe. Topics for PCS2021 include (but are not limited):
- Coding of still and moving pictures; Model-based and synthetic coding
- Multimodal coding and processing; Compression of virtual, augmented and mixed reality
- 360-degree and multi-view video coding; Representation, analysis and coding of 3D scenes
- Machine-learning for image/video analysis and compression. Datasets for training and testing
- Emerging standards for visual data coding; Coding of screen content and desktop sharing
- Perceptually optimized objective quality metrics; Subjective quality assessment
- Transcoding and adaptive streaming; Error robustness, resilience and concealment
- Network-, edge- and cloud-based coding; Optimized streaming
- Low complexity video compression; Energy management in compression
- Hardware architectures
- Real-time video communication; both peer-to-peer and multi-party video conferencing
- Protection and integrity of visual data
Images © Bristol Vision Institute
Plenary Speakers

Dr. Christian Timmerer
Head of research and standardization, Bitmovin Inc. Associate professor multimedia communication, Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt
Panel Discussion: Real-Time Video in the COVID-19 Era
COVID-19 has brought real-time video communication at the forefront of the international agenda and compressed about a decade’s worth of consumer innovation in only a few months. People of all ages have been spending endless hours talking with friends, family members, teachers, work colleagues, banking representatives, doctors, etc. over a video connection on a phone, table, or personal computer. There is probably no human activity that we, as a society, have not examined how to conduct over video during the last year, and probably several for which we found how to do them better. This panel will explore the role and challenges of real-time video in the COVID-19 and post-pandemic era: codec support, multi-platform challenges, scaling to millions of users, as well as advanced usability and automation features that make day-to-day video communication easier and more effective.

Alex Eleftheriadis
Chief Scientist, Enghouse Vidyo & Big Pi Ventures (moderator)

Thomas Davies
Principal Engineer, Collaboration Technology Group, Cisco

Shan Liu
Distinguished Scientist and General Manager, Tencent

Bernard Aboba
Principal Architect, Microsoft

Michael Horowitz
Software Engineer, Google

Li-Tal Mashiach
Facebook
About Bristol
PCS 2021 will be hosted virtually by the University of Bristol, UK. Bristol is a vibrant waterfront city that is well known internationally for its multi-cultural environment, its architecture and green spaces, its cluster of creative industries and its world-leading university. It is a UNESCO City of Film and the home of many well-known artists and organizations such as Banksy, the BBC Natural History Unit and Aardman Animations. It is known as the Green Hollywood, based on its reputation for natural history filmmaking. Bristol was European Green Capital in 2015. It is a place which inspires creativity and is one of the most attractive places (Sunday Times) to work and live in the UK.