Tencent wins a 2021 Big Data Expo award for breakthrough technology, expanding video coding applications

The China International Big Data Industry Expo opened in Guiyang on May 26, 2021, presenting its Leading Scientific and Technological Achievement Awards to 49 projects selected from 560 submissions worldwide. Screen Content Coding technology developed by Tencent Media Lab received a 2021 Leading Scientific and Technological Achievement Award and was named one of the year's seven breakthrough technologies, regarded as the expo's highest honor.

As the world's first expo dedicated to big data, the event has become a barometer of global big data development and one of the industry's most international and authoritative platforms for exchanging achievements. Its leading technology showcase is a centerpiece, recognizing advances from around the world and providing a world-class platform for innovation and exchange. Registered with China's National Office for Science and Technology Awards, the expo's award is a nationally recognized nongovernmental science and technology award focused on big data.

Award-winning innovation expands screen-sharing applications

The breakthrough technology list is a highlight of each expo's leading technology showcase. Screen Content Coding, one of the seven breakthrough technologies selected for 2021, was developed by Tencent Media Lab, a leading research team within Tencent.

Screen Content Coding is a set of solutions designed to improve coding efficiency and user experience in screen-sharing scenarios. It encompasses technologies for next-generation video coding standards, implementations of real-time screen content codecs, and compatibility strategies at the video engine layer.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, online applications such as remote education and video conferencing have proliferated. Screen sharing has become increasingly important as a core part of these applications. The trend toward higher resolution and clarity poses significant challenges for network bandwidth, making efficient compression a major priority.

Tencent Media Lab developed its Screen Content Coding technology specifically for these applications, accounting for the differences between screen sharing and traditional camera-captured content. Innovative algorithms such as intra block copy and palette coding substantially improve coding efficiency, saving more than 60% in bitrate at the same subjective quality and significantly reducing bandwidth costs.

Advancing frontier technologies to support the multimedia ecosystem

The pandemic has made efficient multimedia compression and transmission essential. Looking ahead, widespread 5G adoption and further breakthroughs in immersive media hardware and technology will place greater demands on multimedia compression and decompression. As one of Tencent's leading research and development teams for audio and video communication and processing, Tencent Media Lab focuses on research and commercialization in multimedia compression engines and transmission , intelligent integrated media , and interactive immersive media . It also helps develop international and national industry standards covering multimedia data compression, network transmission protocols, multimedia systems, 5G, and more. Since joining H.266/VVC standardization in 2018, Tencent Media Lab has had more than 300 patented technologies adopted by multiple international standards, placing it among the global leaders. It has also made breakthroughs in multimedia standards for virtual reality (VR), point clouds (PCC), network transmission protocols (DASH), and multimedia systems (OMAF, CMAF, and NBMP).

Screen Content Coding is a solution that spans industry standards and practical deployment. Through the efforts of the lab's standards experts, the international VVC and EVC standards and China's AVS3 standard now include screen content coding tools such as Tencent's IBC technology. These tools deliver additional bitrate savings of more than 60% over existing platforms, cutting bandwidth costs while substantially improving user experience. The innovations broaden hardware decoding support for screen content coding and expand its potential applications. Tencent Media Lab has also independently developed TSE (Tencent Screen Encoder), which offers major advantages in both coding efficiency and speed over industry open-source encoders. TSE is already used in Tencent Meeting, Tencent Cloud, and other products.

Drawing on its extensive technical expertise, Tencent Media Lab has submitted 117 Screen Content Coding proposals to international and national video standards organizations, with more than 50 adopted. The team has filed over 100 related patent applications and published 14 academic papers. Its experts have also been invited to give tutorials on Screen Content Coding at major international conferences including VCIP, ICME, and ICIP.

Receiving the expo's Leading Scientific and Technological Achievement Award and being named one of the seven breakthrough technologies of 2021 marks another important milestone in Tencent's video coding technology development.

Alongside Screen Content Coding, Tencent Meeting's Tianlai audio communication platform and the Tencent Angel PowerFL secure federated computing platform received New Technology Awards. Tencent Cloud WeCity and an intelligent analysis and decision-making system based on health insurance big data received Business Model Awards. Outstanding Project Awards went to the cross-age AI missing-person search system, Tencent Cloud's data security platform, Tencent Customer Service's pandemic response initiative, Tencent Cloud's integrated city management platform, and the adaptive security operations technology system for the industrial internet.

Tencent Media Lab will continue optimizing coding technology and improving its codecs, bringing the latest advances to industry and adapting them to specialized requirements across different fields to support the multimedia technology ecosystem and digital industries.