Feature Coding for Scalable Machine Vision

Deep neural networks (DNNs) drive modern machine vision but are challenging to deploy on edge devices due to high compute demands. Traditional approaches-running the full model on-device or offloading to the cloud face trade-offs in latency, bandwidth, and privacy. Splitting the inference workload between the edge and the cloud offers a balanced solution, but transmitting intermediate features to enable such splitting introduces new bandwidth challenges. To address this, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) initiated the Feature Coding for Machines (FCM) standard, establishing a bitstream syntax and codec pipeline tailored for compressing intermediate features. This paper presents the design and performance of the Feature Coding Test Model (FCTM), showing significant bitrate reductions-averaging 85.14%-across multiple vision tasks while preserving accuracy. FCM offers a scalable path for efficient and interoperable deployment of intelligent features in bandwidth-limited and privacy-sensitive consumer applications.

ROI-Packing: Efficient Region-Based Compression for Machine Vision

This paper introduces ROI-Packing, an efficient image compression method tailored specifically for machine vision. By prioritizing regions of interest (ROI) critical to end-task accuracy and packing them efficiently while discarding less relevant data, ROI-Packing achieves significant compression efficiency without requiring retraining or fine-tuning of end-task models. Comprehensive evaluations across five datasets and two popular tasks-object detection and instance segmentation-demonstrate up to a 44.10% reduction in bitrate without compromising end-task accuracy, along with an 8.88 % improvement in accuracy at the same bitrate compared to the state-of-the-art Versatile Video Coding (VVC) codec standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).

Enabling Next-Generation Consumer Experience with Feature Coding for Machines

As consumer devices become increasingly intelligent and interconnected, efficient data transfer solutions for machine tasks have become essential. This paper presents an overview of the latest Feature Coding for Machines (FCM) standard, part of MPEG-AI and developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). FCM supports AI-driven applications by enabling the efficient extraction, compression, and transmission of intermediate neural network features. By offloading computationally intensive operations to base servers with high computing resources, FCM allows low-powered devices to leverage large deep learning models. Experimental results indicate that the FCM standard maintains the same level of accuracy while reducing bitrate requirements by 75.90% compared to remote inference.

New VVC profiles targeting Feature Coding for Machines

Modern video codecs have been extensively optimized to preserve perceptual quality, leveraging models of the human visual system. However, in split inference systems-where intermediate features from neural network are transmitted instead of pixel data-these assumptions no longer apply. Intermediate features are abstract, sparse, and task-specific, making perceptual fidelity irrelevant. In this paper, we investigate the use of Versatile Video Coding (VVC) for compressing such features under the MPEG-AI Feature Coding for Machines (FCM) standard. We perform a tool-level analysis to understand the impact of individual coding components on compression efficiency and downstream vision task accuracy. Based on these insights, we propose three lightweight essential VVC profiles-Fast, Faster, and Fastest. The Fast profile provides 2.96% BD-Rate gain while reducing encoding time by 21.8%. Faster achieves a 1.85% BD-Rate gain with a 51.5% speedup. Fastest reduces encoding time by 95.6% with only a 1.71% loss in BD-Rate.