Gary Sullivan (engineer)

Gary J. Sullivan is an American electrical engineer who led the development of the H.264/AVC video coding standard and created the DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) API/DDI video decoding feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system platform. He was the chairmen of the (Joint Video Team (JVT)) standardization committee that developed the H.264/AVC standard, and he edited large portions of it. He also chaired and contributed to a number of other video-related standardization projects such as extensions of ITU-T H.263.

Dr. Sullivan is the rapporteur/chairman of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG), a co-chairman of the video part of the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and a co-chairman of the Joint Video Team (JVT), which is a joint project between the VCEG and MPEG organizations. He has led ITU-T VCEG (ITU-T Q.6/SG16) since 1996 and is also the ITU-T video liaison representative to MPEG and JPEG. In MPEG (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11), in addition to his current service as a co-chair of its video work, he also served as the chairman of MPEG video from March 2001 to May 2002. In the JVT he was the JVT chairman for the development of the next generation H.264/AVC video coding standard and its fidelity-range extensions (FRExt), and was a co-chairman for the development of the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extensions.

Recognitions and awards for Dr. Sullivan (and the projects he has led in the standardization community) have included the following:
* Primetime Emmy Engineering Award – [http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS126897+21-Aug-2008+BW20080821 awarded to the JVT standards committee] by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for [http://cdn.emmys.tv/media/releases/2008/rel-pte60-eng.php development of the High Profile] of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, 2008.
* Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Consumer Electronics [http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/ces/eng_excellence.html Engineering Excellence Award] , 2008.
* Designation as a [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/2/33586/01597094.pdf?arnumber=1597094 Fellow] of the IEEE for contributions to video coding and its standardization, 2006.
* The video coding work of the ITU-T led by Sullivan for the preceding ten years was voted as [http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/newslog/Video+Coding+Work+Voted+Most+Influential.aspx the most influential area] of the standardization work of the CCITT and ITU-T in their 50-year history, 2006.
* [http://www.incits.org/honor.htm Technical Achievement award] of the International Committee on Technology Standards (INCITS) for his work on H.264/AVC and other video standardization topics, 2005.

Sullivan received B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Louisville J.B. Speed School of Engineering, Kentucky, in 1982 and 1983, respectively. He received Ph.D. and Engineer degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1991.

Sullivan holds the position of Video Architect in the Core Media Processing Team of the Windows Division of Microsoft Corporation. At Microsoft he also designed and remains lead engineer for the DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) API/DDI video decoding feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system platform. His DXVA designs include decoding acceleration schemes for H.261, MPEG-1, H.262/MPEG-2, H.263, MPEG-4 Part 2, H.264/AVC, Windows Media Video versions 8 and 9, and VC-1.

Prior to joining Microsoft in 1999, he was the manager of communications core research at PictureTel Corporation, the quondam world leader in videoconferencing communication. He was previously a Howard Hughes Fellow and member of technical staff in the Advanced Systems Division of Hughes Aircraft Corporation, and a terrain-following radar system software engineer for Texas Instruments.

ee also

* MPEG
* VCEG
* JPEG
* H.264/AVC
* H.263
* H.262/MPEG-2
* MPEG-1
* H.261
* DirectX Video Acceleration
* Windows Media Video
* VC-1

External links

Video Coding Standardization Organizations

* [http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com16/jvt/index.html Joint Video Team (JVT)]
* [http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/ ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)]
* [http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com16/index.asp ITU-T Study Group 16]

Video Coding Standards

* [http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264 ITU-T Recommendation H.264] , also standardized as [http://www.iso.org/iso/search.htm?qt=14496-10&published=on&active_tab=standards ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10]
* [http://www.iso.org/iso/search.htm?qt=14496-2&sort=rel&type=simple&published=on ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 2]
* [http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.263 ITU-T Recommendation H.263]
* [http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.262 ITU-T Recommendation H.262] , also standardized as [http://www.iso.org/iso/search.htm?qt=14496-10&published=on&active_tab=standards ISO/IEC MPEG-2 Video]
* [http://www.iso.org/iso/search.htm?qt=13818-2&published=on&active_tab=standards ISO/IEC MPEG-1 Video]
* [http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.261 ITU-T Recommendation H.261]

DirectX Video Acceleration

* [http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms798379.aspx DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA)]
* [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms799543.aspx DXVA for Video Decoding]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=3D1C290B-310B-4EA2-BF76-714063A6D7A6&displaylang=en DXVA for H.264/AVC Decoding]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8792DFDB-8459-4CB7-ADB4-FEF30B609B31&displaylang=en DXVA for Windows Media Video v8, v9 and vA Decoding (Including SMPTE 421M "VC-1")]
* [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms799562.aspx DXVA for H.261, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (H.262), H.263, and MPEG-4 Part 2]