Press Releases Topics

Hearing damages caused by accidents, illnesses, or simply aging – the listening pleasure of many people is impaired. Fraunhofer IIS develops innovative audio technologies that can provide an improved audio experience to people with hearing deficiencies. To tailor solutions to the needs of the affected individuals, Fraunhofer IIS is looking for test listeners.

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS and IHSE GmbH, the leading developer of KVM systems, are cooperating to bring JPEG XS functionality to software and hardware-based devices which enable ultra-low latency and high-quality video transmissions.

Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the xHE-AAC and MPEG-H Audio codecs, and MainConcept, a leading provider of video and audio codecs, plugins, and applications to the production, streaming, and broadcast industries, are pleased to announce that MainConcept’s Live Encoder and FFmpeg Plugins now support Fraunhofer’s industry-leading MPEG-H Audio and xHE-AAC software encoders.

Today, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, primary developer of the next generation, immersive and personalized MPEG-H Audio system, announced a strategic partnership with Avid® to support future MPEG-H Audio support in Pro Tools®. This tighter integration will enable producers to build much more compelling, personalized, and elaborate immersive sound experiences for their audiences.

Steinberg and Fraunhofer IIS deliver native support of MPEG-H Audio in Nuendo updates to come.

Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the MPEG-H Audio system, and Ateme, a global leader of video compression and delivery solutions, announced today that they facilitate the delivery of personalized and immersive sound experiences with the integration of Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H Audio into Ateme's KYRION encoders.

Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the xHE-AAC audio codec, is pleased to announce the extension of its AAC family software license agreement with Google.

Latin America’s largest media group, Grupo Globo, is driving the change of media production, transmission, and consumption to a future-proof system. Now, they take another major step in the Digital TV evolution in Brazil and bring the SBTVD TV 2.5 standard into reality.

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS is proud to announce that the LC3plus codec has received the highly valued Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification issued by the Japanese Audio Society. The Hi-Res Audio Wireless logo issued by the Japanese Audio Society (JAS) is an internationally recognized seal of quality. Products that receive the certification meet strict technical requirements.

Fraunhofer IIS and Astrodesign Inc. announce their partnership at IBC 2022 to offer JPEG XS based solutions either as an FPGA IP core or as a software solution. Both parties are permitted under a cross licensing agreement to sublicense the other's party technology. They will demonstrate the JPEG XS encoding/decoding process and its interoperability by an encoder FPGA solution from Astrodesign together with a software decoder application based on Fraunhofer's SDK (Software Development Kit).

At IBC 2022 in Amsterdam, the video coding experts of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS announce and demonstrate their JPEG XS SDK 5.0 solutions achieving a 25% acceleration for en- and decoding of 4k/8k images on x86 CPUs, ARM CPUs, and NVidia GPUs. Due to a more streamlined parametrization and optimization, they are able to provide an essential performance increase. The Fraunhofer IIS SDK also allows MXF support in accordance with SMPTE ST2124. 

MediaTek, a leading fabless semiconductor company, and Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard, have once again collaborated for bringing the most advanced audio experience to consumer homes.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS announces its ultra-low-latency software implementation of JPEG XS on DELTACAST´s video I/O solution with a latency far below one frame. This will allow broadcast equipment developers and implementers to benefit from JPEG XS in terms of low latency but also low complexity within their devices and equipment.

Fraunhofer IIS and intoPIX, the main JPEG XS standard patent holders, announce the creation and availability of a JPEG XS patent pool administered by Vectis IP. The new pool enables manufacturers, developers, and implementers to efficiently license JPEG XS standard essential patents using the framework of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing. JPEG XS is the new lightweight low latency codec that can be used to improve connectivity in video workflows.

The Brazilian SBTVD Forum recently finalized the technical evaluation phase of the TV 3.0 Project for the definition of the next-generation television system in Brazil. It comprised a detailed technical evaluation of all proposed technologies. As a result, the MPEG-H Audio system was selected as the sole mandatory audio codec for the future Brazilian broadcast system.

Grupo Rede Amazônica is the first broadcaster in Latin America to provide a 24/7 MPEG-H Audio service on one of their terrestrial broadcast channels.

Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard, announced today that Sony Corporation (Sony) has licensed Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H 3D Audio Baseline Profile Decoder software and joined the MPEG-H Trademark Program.

In order to meet the quality expectations of their users, high-end consumer electronics manufacturer Bang & Olufsen decided on the new open standard LC3plus codec from Fraunhofer IIS for their wireless streaming devices. LC3plus is currently the most advanced solution that com-bines high-resolution audio with low delay.

Starwaves, a developer and distributor of receiver technologies centred around the digital broadcast standard DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale), joined forces with Fraunhofer IIS, a leading supplier in the field of broadcast encoder and receiver components for DRM, to develop an Android app that allows DRM reception on mobile devices. Starwaves enables Android phones and tablets to receive entertainment, text information, and emergency warnings via DRM Digital Radio – without costly data plans, independent from cell phone network availability, and based on innovative Fraunhofer technology.

Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the xHE-AAC audio codec and long-time member of the ATSC as well as the DRM Consortium, and Sinclair Broadcast Group (Nasdaq: SBGI), a diversified media company and leading provider of local sports and news in the U.S., are joining forces to bring the best possible digital radio experience based on DRM to users of the ATSC 3.0 digital TV platform.

With “Music, Makers & Machines” Google Arts & Culture introduces an interactive online format to capture the progress and relevance of electronic music. The platform is the outcome of a collaboration of more than 50 key players, among them also Fraunhofer IIS. With “mp3 and more”, Fraunhofer IIS introduces the history of mp3 and the working principles of audio coding.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS and the Belgian technology provider for compression solutions intoPIX S.A. today announce a worldwide patent licensing program for JPEG XS based software and hardware solutions. A JPEG XS license pool is currently being set up and expected to be fully rolled out by June 2021. The licensing program addresses the IPR conditions for use of JPEG XS in both cloud-based services and professional and consumer devices.

Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the xHE-AAC audio codec, today announced that Netflix is now using the xHE-AAC audio codec. Netflix has licensed Fraunhofer’s high-quality xHE-AAC software and is using it to encode its entire catalog of TV series, documentaries and feature films across a variety of genres and languages.

Fraunhofer IIS, an institute of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany, has announced a new web-based test service that developers and manufacturers can use to validate their implementations of the xHE-AAC® audio codec for compliance with MPEG standards. The service, which is available exclusively at https://test.xhe-aac.com, is free to use upon registration with Fraunhofer IIS and will test both encoders and decoders.

Ten years ago, at the start of the 2010 academic year, a unique collaboration was established between Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS: the International Audio Laboratories Erlangen. Since then, the research organization has become an internationally renowned institution with six professorships of its own and a team of 50 people.

Media digitalization is his business. Dr. Siegfried Foessel is Head of the Moving Picture Technology department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, and he shares his expertise with students at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF). Now, HFF has made the motion picture expert an honorary professor. It will be his responsibility to integrate advances in technology into the curriculum.

Sound United LLC, parent company to Denon, Polk Audio, Marantz, Definitive Technology, HEOS, Classé, and Boston Acoustics, alongside Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the MPEG-H Audio standard, today announced the immediate availability of the MPEG-H 3D Audio format across a wide range of home theater products. The selected Denon and Marantz AV amplifiers and AV preprocessors will receive MPEG-H support via a firmware update.  

Fraunhofer IIS is pleased to announce the licensing of its MPEG-H Audio patents to Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., allowing Samsung to manufacture products that feature MPEG-H Audio.
 

Fraunhofer IIS welcomes the release and official adoption of the MPEG-H 3D Audio Baseline Profile. The new profile was designed to exactly meet the business and technical needs of the industry.

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, inventor of mp3 and primary developer of AAC, MPEG-H Audio and other MPEG standard audio codecs, announced today that Amazon has become an important music-centric licensee of its MPEG-H audio decoder software, included in the new Echo Studio. MPEG-H is the novel audio scheme used for new immersive music services including those based on the Sony 360 Reality Audio format. 360 Reality Audio services from Amazon Music HD on the Echo Studio are enabled by the Fraunhofer software.

Fraunhofer IIS introduces the latest major release of its professional ContentServer head-end technology for Digital Radio DAB+ and DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale): Version R7 of this flexible and highly reliable solution is now readily available in products from Fraunhofer’s OEM partners.

The SBTVD (Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital / Brazilian Digital Television System) Forum has selected MPEG-H Audio for inclusion as an additional audio system in the ISDB-Tb specifications. This allows broadcasters to deliver immersive and personalized sound to Brazilian viewers over the existing SBTVD/ISDB-Tb system by simulcasting MPEG-H Audio alongside the existing AAC audio.

The new version of the Flame finishing and color grading software from Autodesk now comes with an integration of the well-renowned easyDCP IMF (Interoperable Master Format) functionality from Fraunhofer IIS. Via plug-in every user can easily create and export IMF packages in accordance to the technical specifications for IMF deliveries.

Fraunhofer IIS is pleased to announce the licensing of its MPEG-H Audio patents to LG Electronics Inc., allowing LG to produce products which feature MPEG-H Audio.

Fraunhofer IIS announced at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas that they are working with Blackmagic Design to include MPEG-H editing and authoring tools in the Fairlight audio subsystem of this popular content creation application.

At CES 2019, which takes place in Las Vegas from January 8 to 11, 2019, Fraunhofer IIS will present its latest developments in audio and media technologies, including a series of CES debuts: the first commercially available MPEG-H-enabled 3D soundbars, Sonamic Loudness for car stereos, the xHE-AAC audio codec natively supported in Android, and upHear Voice Quality Enhancement for improved speech recognition on smart devices. CES visitors can experience these technologies and more at the Fraunhofer booth 20236, located in South Hall 1 at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC).

The post-production software easyDCP has secured its place on the market for creation, playback, and quality control of digital cinema packages (DCPs) and Interoperable Master Packages (IMPs) for ten years now. Its rich functionality is not only available through the easyDCP standalone software, but is also integrated into a number of cutting-edge post-production tools via the easyDCP software Application Programming Interface (API).  

The Fraunhofer-Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS presents its new Software Development Kit (SDK) with optimized functions to code images with the new JPEG XS codec. JPEG XS is suited for use in production environments where high resolution image data of up to 8k/60p UHD video must be transferred via Ethernet. The coding specialists of Fraunhofer IIS will demonstrate the JPEG XS codec as complete live stream with real-time playback.

At the IBC Show in Amsterdam, Fraunhofer IIS and Vewd, the world’s largest smart TV OTT software provider, will showcase a HbbTV demo that includes DVB DASH streaming on a set-top box running Vewd Core and Vewd HbbTV Module with MPEG-H Audio support, as defined in the latest HbbTV 2.0.2 specification.

The opening game of the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia will mark the world’s first regular broadcast with immersive and interactive audio: The South Korean television and radio network company SBS will transmit this match live in Ultra-High Definition (UHD) based on the ATSC 3.0 standard, utilizing the advanced features of Fraunhofer’s MPEG-H TV Audio System, immersive sound and interactive audio.

With the release of the Android P beta 3 preview, Fraunhofer IIS announces a new version of the popular FDK library which has been a part of Android since 2012. The FDK2 version will bring several new technologies to Android OEMs, service providers and developers, including xHE-AAC for video and music delivery down to 12kbit/s for stereo sound and MPEG-D DRC dynamic range control for better listening in noisy environments.

Yandex, a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning, has incorporated Fraunhofer’s upHear Voice Quality Enhancement technology into its first smart speaker, enabling the device to accurately hear voice commands issued from anywhere in a room.

Adapting the length of a radio documentary or listening to a radio drama from the positions of different protagonists in the play - these and many more personalised, immersive listener experiences become possible due to a novel technological concept called object-based media. Key tools and apps for implementing object-based media for audio content have been developed by ORPHEUS, an EU-funded research project performed by ten major European media industry players.

Any ATSC 1.0 TV in the Republic of Korea will be able to tune into ATSC 3.0 over-the-air broadcasts when connected to INNOPIA Technologies’ IMT-M6400, a set-top box (STB) that incorporates an ATSC 3.0 tuner, accesses broadcasters’ interactive Internet-delivered content, and features Fraunhofer IIS’s MPEG-H 3D Audio technology.

Ericsson Media Solutions, one of the leading suppliers of professional broadcast media solutions, is the first manufacturer to support the MPEG-H TV Audio System in contribution applications.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS announces its first JPEG XS codec implementation for video production at the NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 9-12 2018. The coding specialists of Fraunhofer IIS will demonstrate the JPEG XS codec as an input format for post-production in a software plug-in for Adobe® Premiere® Pro CC with real-time playback capability of 4k60p UHD video.

China’s AVS 3D Audio Task Group has chosen Fraunhofer IIS as the transmission audio codec solution provider for the upcoming 3D Audio standard that will be used in the country’s 4K UHD broadcast. Fraunhofer proposed its MPEG-H TV Audio System according to the requirements of China's next-generation broadcasting audio standard in order to meet the Chinese market demand for compelling audio.

Global communications equipment provider Huawei has entered into a worldwide patent license agreement with the renowned developer of audio and media technologies, Fraunhofer IIS, for Fraunhofer's MPEG-4 Audio patent portfolio. The license agreement addresses past and future use of Fraunhofer's MPEG-4 Audio patent portfolio in Huawei's products.

The Fraunhofer-Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS announces their new Realception® brand for post-production tools that enable working with light-field or multi-camera data.

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, the world-renowned experts in audio and media technologies, and MStar Semiconductor Inc., a leader in application-specific ICs for the consumer and communication product markets, announce the immediate availability of the MPEG-H TV Audio System decoder in MStar’s 4K mainstream TV system-on-chip (SOC) platform T12.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS announces the easyDCP Publisher. It provides a reliable and easy-to-use functionality for creating Digital Cinema Packages DCPs based on the recognized easyDCP software suite.

The world-renowned experts in audio and media technologies from Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS and Realtek Semiconductor Corp., one of the world’s leading network and multimedia IC providers, today announced the porting of the MPEG-H TV Audio System decoder to Realtek’s RTD2871 Ultra High Definition Television (UHD TV) system solution has been completed.

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, the world-renowned experts in audio and media technologies and RFmondial, a leading manufacturer of professional digital radio equipment, showcase at IBC 2017 the Fraunhofer MultimediaPlayer technology as part of RFmondial’s new DAB monitoring receiver RF-DAB for transmitter, content and remote-coverage monitoring.

Fraunhofer IIS and the French Research and Technology Institute b<>com have teamed up at IBC 2017 to showcase an end-to-end spatial audio system for production, delivery, playback and rendering of Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA) MPEG-H Audio, the international standard for immersive audio. The first virtual reality experience produced with this toolchain is the episodic VR comedy show “Vaudeville” from French VR studio DVGroup.

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS and Analog Devices, Inc., today unveiled software technology at CEDIA 2017 designed to significantly improve the immersive sound reproduction capabilities of consumer playback devices.

Smartphones are perfect all-rounders, but their poor voice quality is still a vexing issue. With the new EVS codec mobile conversations sound as natural as if the person you’re calling was standing right next to you. The Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize 2017 went to Markus Multrus, Dr. Guillaume Fuchs and Stefan Döhla for the development of the codec. They accepted the prize on behalf of the 50-strong team of researchers and engineers at Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen who worked on this project.

Fraunhofer’s Spatial Audio Microphone Processing SDK is designed to ease the high-quality capture of authentic spatial audio content on set. It is the first audio technology to be delivered under Fraunhofer’s upHear® brand of immersive audio innovations and Felix & Paul Studios is the first partner to incorporate and refine Fraunhofer’s algorithm into a virtual reality camera system.

Erlangen, Germany/Las Vegas, Nevada – Today, the Fraunhofer-Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS introduced a new member of its renowned software suite easyDCP: the easyDCP Publisher. Developed for content creators for the production of a Digital Cinema Package (DCP), the easyDCP Publisher is an allin- one software solution for generation and playback of DCPs with a project based license model.

Erlangen and Ilmenau, Germany/Las Vegas, Nevada – The Interoperable Master Format (IMF) is showing rapid growth in the media industry since its standardization by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) in 2016. The IMF is a uniform exchange format in post-production that enables the generation of different distribution formats derived from the master. For this process automated quality control of the AV-material after each transcoding step is essential to save time and money simultaneously. The IMF does not define quality control mechanisms; however, such functionalities are now integrated in the easyDCP post-production tools from Fraunhofer IIS to facilitate automated transcoding.

In early 2017, LG will deliver new television models with the MPEG-H TV Audio System, the next-generation audio technology mainly developed by the world-renowned audio experts at Fraunhofer IIS.

In advance of the launch of the new terrestrial UHD TV service in South Korea, Fraunhofer IIS will preview the system at CES 2017.

In early 2017, Fraunhofer IIS will introduce an MPEG-H enabled immersive soundbar and audio video receiver (AVR) reference design allowing convenient delivery of 3D sound into consumers’ homes, bringing audio quality to new levels.

In an effort to make the AVR reference design available to original equipment manufacturers, Fraunhofer is implementing MPEG-H and Fraunhofer’s 3D soundbar processing technology on TI’s 66AK2G02 System on Chip (SoC), an industry-leading platform for AVRs and soundbars.

Consumer products such as TVs, soundbars, audio-video receivers, set-top boxes, digital media adapters, or mobile apps and devices may display the trademark to indicate that they have been tested to work together and support the features of the MPEG-H system used for TV broadcasts.

PIXTREE, Inc., a South Korean digital multimedia solution provider, makes an industry-leading move as an early supporter of the MPEG-H TV Audio System, a next generation audio technology mainly developed by the world-renowned audio experts at Fraunhofer IIS. The PixHEVC-E4600HA Realtime UHD Encoder will be among the first professional broadcast encoders in South Korea to support the MPEG-H system in the marketplace.