Tencent Liu Shan, the flexible driving force behind the daily active more than 10 million | List of women in technology

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In 2020, the remote office software market broke out during the epidemic, and Tencent's conference went online for more than 10 million daily activities within two months, and in March, the United Nations chose Tencent conference software, opening the largest global dialogue in history.

Liu Shan, head of Tencent Multimedia Lab, introduced to Forbes China that under the scenario of high concurrent traffic, it can maintain clear and smooth online conference services, and the efficient scalable video codec technology provided by Tencent Multimedia Lab behind the scenes, with a series of intimate and forward-looking user experiences such as screen split screen, beauty, audio and video noise reduction, makes Tencent Conference stand out in the fiercely competitive conference software market.

Liu Shan is the only woman among Tencent's outstanding scientists. Image source: DR

For Liu Shan, responding quickly, leading the market demand, and providing optimized audio and video technology for applications such as Tencent Conference has condensed her 20 years of scientific research accumulation and achievements from image retrieval to video compression and processing technology, to network transmission, and then to the broader field of multimedia technology.

Liu Shan is the only woman among Tencent's outstanding scientists.

Since joining Tencent in 2017, Shan Liu has formed a standards team and represented Tencent in achieving breakthroughs in international standards such as multimedia systems, data compression and network transmission protocols. At the same time, Liu Shan led the team to develop and deliver a number of multimedia core technologies, which were applied to a variety of Tencent's products, including Tencent Conference, Tencent Video, Tencent Cloud Games, etc.

Prior to joining Tencent, Shan Liu worked for a number of Fortune 500 companies, serving as the director of media technology development department of MediaTek (USA), the chief researcher of MERL, and the senior algorithm engineer of Sony.

Liu Shan introduced that when joining Tencent in 2017, the multimedia laboratory was also called the audio and video laboratory, and the video engine at that time mainly served QQ real-time audio and video applications, scalability coding optimization, encoding optimization for screen sharing and other technologies, before the team did not have much accumulation.

In fact, video codec has been around for some years as a research or R&D field. Whether it is from the early era of digital television, to the later OTT and now the Internet of Everything, technology continues to evolve, but the importance has never changed. The multi-standard format video codec technology for different application scenarios has also been a research hotspot in various video application fields.

"In the conference scene, a lot of PPT and document screen sharing will be used, and the coding technology for screen content needs to be optimized." When the network bandwidth fluctuates, we need to adopt a scalable video encoding technology. This is also the technology used by similar software in the world. There are other technologies such as ROI coding optimization and so on, which our laboratory has integrated into the product from scratch and engineering optimization in just over a year. In a year I've done a lot of things I've done in the last decade. Liu Shan said with a smile, "There are also some more intuitive function implementations, such as the background cloth of Tencent conferences, video beautification, noise reduction processing, and dark scene enhancement and other new features, which have greatly improved the user experience." ”

Liu Shan introduced that since 2017, the proportion of video traffic in the entire Internet traffic has been at a high level. By 2022 we expect more than 82% of Internet traffic to come from video or apps that contain video. The business value represented by the huge numbers is self-evident.

However, there is a short incubation period of one or two years from the laboratory technology to the final application, which tests the foresight of the technical manager. Liu Shan said: "Tencent's product line is very rich, multimedia experiment technology is used in the product, and applications like Tencent Conference have driven tens of millions of user traffic, which shows that it is good enough." That is to say, we decided to invest in incubating a technology, whether it will really be used in the future, whether it will be converted into productivity, which requires technology managers to balance technology foresight and practical application. Because we want products that can really land, our algorithms are very demanding. ”

In addition to video conferencing software, in promoting the commercialization of cloud games, Tencent Multimedia Lab's video codec technology has also played a decisive role in reducing costs.

One challenge facing the commercialization of cloud gaming is the high cost. Liu Shan introduced that the high cost of cloud games is roughly split, and we can see that the largest cost comes from bandwidth 34%, followed by GPU 27%. In order to promote the commercialization of cloud games, Tencent's related business units hope to reduce costs by half in 2020. There will be more proportional cost reductions in each year that follows. A big part of this will come from the optimization of video encoders. This has also become an important chip for Tencent to compete with Google, Microsoft and Sony in the field of cloud games for cloud gaming service capabilities.

In the field of autonomous driving, engineers in the multimedia lab have developed a point cloud data compression SDK for Tencent's autonomous driving team, which can compress data by 6 times without basic loss of damage, greatly saving storage space and costs.

As the only laboratory focused on multimedia technology in Tencent, in addition to supporting the business of this BG, it also supports many different BG services of the company. In addition to Tencent conferences and cloud games, it also supports wireless screen projection, AI intelligent cloud cuts, transcoding services for video clouds, and renovation of old movies by Tencent Pictures. There are also immersive media, including vr, AR and 3D technology virtual showrooms, online experiences.

In April 2018, at the MPEG 122 conference held in San Diego, USA, Tencent Multimedia Labs submitted 10 high-quality standard proposals as a small but refined team, and surpassed many internationally renowned companies and research institutions in the CFP quality evaluation. At that time, Liu Shan had joined Tencent for less than half a year. At the time of the deadline for the proposal, the team consisted of only 6 members.

As the author of more than 80 academic journals and conference papers and the inventor of more than 150 authorized global patents, Liu Shan has made achievements in the field of multimedia data compression, transmission protocols and systems, wireless networks, IoT and other industry standards, she has served as the chairman and co-chair of the international standard expert group for many times, and is the co-editor of the finalized international standard H.265/HEVCSCC and the next generation of international video codec standard VVC, which is being developed. Liu Shan admits that he has been doing standards overseas for more than ten years and is very eager to help Chinese Internet companies occupy a place on the international standards stage.

Leading the company to participate in the formulation of international standards is also one of the missions of Liu Shan to join the Multimedia Lab.

"In the process of participating in the formulation of international standards, the team showed the world our leading technology, and greatly enhanced the voice of Tencent and even Chinese companies in the World Standards Organization." Setting standards is a painstaking process that requires patience and perseverance. And this persistence comes from the pursuit of technological exploration. Liu Shan said, "Technical pride is the internal driving force of scientific researchers." ”

Shan Liu, Ph.D., graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University with a bachelor's degree, and graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Southern California with a master's degree and a doctorate. Liu Shan said that he was born in a family with a science and engineering background, his father was a university teacher, and his mother was a research engineer. His love of science has been stimulated since childhood.

In the future, interactive immersive media and intelligent converged media are both areas that are strongly promoted by 5G technology. She said: "In the 5G era, multimedia must be more imaginative, and what you see is what you get.

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