Gary Sullivan

Gary J. Sullivan (* 1960 in Louisville , Kentucky , USA ), is a leading American software developer of the video codecs H.263 MPEG (ISO / IEC JTC1 / SC29 / WG11) and H.264 / MPEG-4 (AVC -Default).

Sullivan has been an employee of Microsoft since 1999 , chairman and reporter in the International Telecommunication Union in particular in the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector Video Coding Experts Group and 2nd chairman and reporter of the ISO / IEC Moving Picture Experts Group from March 2001 to May 2002. Also of the Joint Video Team of the Video Coding Experts Group, since December 2001.

MPEG and JVT are a joint project of the MPEG and VCEG organizations. He acts as a representative of the ITU-T in the existing connection to MPEG. Sullivan is the main designer of DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA), which is a feature and capability in the video decoding of Microsoft operating systems. In 2005, Sullivan received the Technical Achievement Award from the International Committee on Technology Standards for his work at AVC u. a. Standardization topics awarded.

At the University of Louisville , Kentucky, at the local JB Speed ​​School of Engineering , Sullivan received his bachelor's degree in 1982 , then his master's degree in 1983 and his doctorate in 1991 from the University of California , Los Angeles .

At Hughes Aircraft Corporation , he was a Howard Hughes Fellow and a member of the engineering department in the Advanced Systems Division . For Texas Instruments he worked as a software developer on the terrain-following radar system. Before he started at Microsoft, he worked as a manager in the Communications Core Research department of PictureTel Corporation (now Polycom), a leader in the field of video conferencing systems . At the beginning of 1996 he took over the management of the ITU-T VCEG and was among other things the author of the H.263 + and H.263 ++ projects. At the Joint Video Team there, he was chairman of the development of the H.264 standard for video coding. Sullivan was significantly involved in the development of the so-called fidelity-range extensions . He is currently the 2nd chairman for the development of scalable video coding, an extension to the AVC standard.

Sullivan also occupies the position of video architect in the Core Media Processing Team of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media department. The DXVA technology developed there is used to accelerate the hardware of graphics cards when decoding video streams and is supported by almost all PCs sold today.

Sullivan has four granted patents in the United States and several other, but not yet granted, patents. He publishes regularly, participates in conferences of JVT, MPEG, VCEG and the most important university institutions for video and image processing. He is currently focusing on research and publications in the following areas: video / image compression, distortion optimization at different frame rates, motion estimation / compensation, scalar / vector quantization and coding that is robust against errors / packet loss.

In 2012 he received the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award .