AI Poised to Transform Video-Compression Landscape Apple’s WaveOne purchase

AI Poised to Transform Video-Compression Landscape Apple’s WaveOne purchase heralds a new era in smart-streaming of AR and video  ... CRAIG S. SMITH

Apple’s surprise purchase at the end of last month of WaveOne, a California-based startup that develops content-aware AI algorithms for video compression, showcases an important shift in how video signals are streamed to our devices. In the near-term Cuppertino’s purchase will likely lead to smart video-compression tools in Apple’s video-creation products and in the development of its much-discussed augmented-reality headset.

However, Apple isn’t alone. Startups in the AI video codec space are likely to prove acquisition targets for other companies trying to keep up.

For decades video compression used mathematical models to reduce the bandwidth required for transmission of analog signals, focusing on the changing portions of a scene from frame to frame. When digital video was introduced in the 1970s, improving video compression became a major research focus, leading to the development of many compression algorithms called codecs, short for “coder-decoder,” that compress and decompress digital media files. These algorithms paved the way for the current dominance of video in the digital age. ... '