Jill MacDonald Boyce

Anyone who has binge-watched a TV show on their favorite streaming service, utilized the fast-forward or rewind function on their DVR, or checked out the latest viral video on their mobile phone can basically thank one person for how seamless the process has become.

With more than a quarter-century of experience in video compression and standardization, Jill Boyce is recognized as a global leader in modern video coding standards, making important contributions to the efficient delivery of video across multiple platforms. Her revolutionary work has been a critical in fueling the growth and ubiquity of the media streaming industry.

Boyce earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from KU in 1988, and in 1990 received her Master’s degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis in communications and signal processing from Princeton University.

Boyce now works as the Chief Media Architect of the Platform Engineering Group at Intel. Other stops in her career include VP for Research and Innovation at Thomson Corporate Research (now Technicolor) and Director of Algorithms at video conferencing technology start-up Vidyo, where she pioneered the first use of a scalable video coding system. As her career has advanced and Boyce has taken on expanding leadership roles in the media industry, she has played a pivotal role in industry adoption and productization of the standards she developed, making them accessible to mass consumer markets. Her technical contribution to the field is far-reaching and profound.

From complex features that viewers take for granted to those that are so seamless they go unnoticed, Boyce has had hand in developing an estimated 90% of the coding formats utilized in video playback today. Many of the standards she developed are the basis for all major video applications and are embedded in hardware or software in all video cameras, smart phones, and online video applications, such as YouTube and Netflix.

Features such as fast forward and reverse (known as ‘trick-play’) that were common on VCRs were not initially available for compressed digital video. Boyce invented a system to intelligently select portions of a compressed bitstream to enable smoother fast forward and more efficient storage of recorded programs. The key concepts of this work were also used to enable fast channel changing in a digital broadcasting system. These trick-play operations rely on data extraction techniques she invented and implemented, and her patents on this topic have been widely cited, with companies licensing several of them.

Boyce also introduced a concept known as “weighted prediction.” This function adaptively selects the best reference frames and scaling factors to improve prediction efficiency in the presence of scene changes or major illumination changes. This has become an essential component in all advanced video coding standards and is widely deployed in many commercial products.

Fades to black between scene changes or at the end of a show are a particularly challenging problem for video coding. Boyce developed a method of weighted prediction to resolve this issue, which is now the industry standard and is required in any standards-compatible decoder.

Boyce also created a system to seamlessly adjust video streams based on the device the being used by the consumer. This ‘scalable’ technology ensures the user sees the same high-quality video stream whether they’re on a mobile phone, tablet or laptop. Earlier methods of video delivery required creation of two video streams — a high-priority bitstream and a low-priority bitstream. Boyce proposed a clean multi-layer design for scalable video, which enables combining multiple layers of different types into a single bitstream.

Boyce continues her pioneering work on video coding. She recently represented Intel in the development of the next generation video coding standard VVC, and in the development of the MPEG Immersive Video standard, which is poised to significantly change the way we consume video.

Boyce recently founded a new startup company, Vimmerse, where she is the CEO. Vimmerse is developing a platform and tools for creation and storage of immersive video, which allows viewers to navigate within a remote 3D scene.

While at KU, Boyce exhibited the same leadership qualities that are a trademark of her career. During her senior year at KU, she served as the president of the KU chapter of Society of Women Engineers and the KU chapter of Eta Kappa Nu. She was also named the Outstanding Senior in Electrical Engineering.

Boyce was elected a Fellow in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2019 for contributions to video coding and has been granted nearly 200 U.S. patents, including several essential to video compression standards. She has also shared in two Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards — in 2017 for High Efficiency Video Coding and in 2008 for Advanced Video Coding.

Jill met her husband, Shawn Boyce, in a Circuits 1 class while they were both KU EE sophomores, and they were married on campus in Danforth chapel a week after graduation. They have two adult children, James, who lives in Overland Park and works as an attorney in Kansas City, Mo., and Laura, who lives and works in Los Angeles.