2002

 

2002-December: JVT completes the technical work leading to AVC availability!

 

Awajishima, Japan, 17 December 2002. At its meeting, held from 9-13 December 2002, the Joint Video Team (JVT) has completed the technical work necessary to make a dramatic new video technology available to industry and consumers. The JVT will spend the next three months on the final preparation of the text for approval and publication by ISO and the ITU-T. “This is a testimony to the spirit of cooperation and dedication made by a foremost assembly of coding experts in the world” said Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, Convenor of the MPEG Committee (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11). ISO/IEC 14496‑10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) as it will be known by the ISO Community is a joint project with the Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) of the ITU‑T who will refer to the standard as ITU-T Recommendation H.264. The JVT was formed as a joint group of MPEG and VCEG in December of 2001 and while the foundation for the standard was laid by the ITU‑T experts, significant additional technology has been brought into the standard that will dramatically extend its usefulness across the widest variety of applications from mobile phones to High Definition TV. “Completing the technical design is a key milestone towards making this important standard available to the industry at large.  It's testimony to the efforts of the overall team that the technical design was completed in record time, paving the way for adoption of this exciting technology in 2003” said Dr. Gary Sullivan, chairman of the JVT and the ITU-T VCEG.

 

The standard will become an official international standard once each of the organizations, ISO and the ITU-T, ratify the technical design that was produced during this extended week of very hard work by over 100 engineers and scientists from around the world. That process will completed on 17 March 2003 when the text of the standard will be ready for publication.

 

With the completion of the AVC technical design, the industry associations and consortia, such as M4IF, can now begin the important work of promoting AVC in a vast array of applications to industry at large.

 

Other MPEG news

 

REL/RDD

The MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language and its associated Rights Data Dictionary were promoted to the final technical ballot phase, FCD(Final Committee Draft). These two parts of MPEG-21 enable the detailed expression of usage and consumption rights for Multimedia Digital Items.

 

Testbed

MPEG created the Integration Subgroup at its 62^nd meeting in October 2002. This group of MPEG experts has embarked on a new and very exciting capability for the multimedia industry: the MPEG-21 Resource Delivery Test Bed. The goal of this test bed is to support scalable media coding and testing in network streaming environments. The test bed system architecture currently covers four key modules including the FGS-based Video Content Server, Video Clients, Network Interface, and a Network Simulator. Further development on this test bed will allow:

-          testing of MPEG-4 over IP (part 8) software,

-          testing of IPMP extensions in real-life situations,

-          testing of MPEG-21 digital item adaptation and processing in streaming environment with dynamic changes.

This work will be embodied in a technical report (MPEG-21 Part 12) and will gather technology from all MPEG subgroups and all MPEG standards.

 

Video Scalability

In its continuing efforts to seek the latest multimedia technology, MPEG has been made aware of new technology in the field of video scalability. MPEG invites those aware of new technology in this area to join your national body and participate in the development of this exciting new area of work. Universal Multimedia Access holds the promise that the Content Delivery Networks will be able use content prepared once and then reused for delivery anywhere.

 

Implementation Studies

As technology has advanced in recent years the implementation of MPEG standards has become a mixture of hardware and software. MPEG continues to make every effort to assist industry in implementing its standards and has produced an HDL (Hardware Description Language) version of its MPEG-4 specification. Implementers can choose whether functions are implemented in hardware or software or a mixture of technologies.

 

2D Graphics and Font

MPEG will reference OpenType® as its font representation and begin its technology development for font compression using MicroType Express® as a starting point.

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MPEG reminds industry of outstanding calls due back shortly. Detailed information on each of these calls is available in the documents whose numbers are provided below.

 

Call for Proposals on Digital Item Processing: Digital Item Base Operations and Digital Item Method Language (N5329)

This Call addresses technology for Digital Item Processing as part of the MPEG-21 multimedia framework.  MPEG has identified several components within Digital Item Processing: Digital Item Methods (DIMs), Digital Item Method Engine (DIME), Digital Item Base Operation (DIBO) and Digital Item Method Language (DIML).  These components are introduced in the overall Digital Item Processing Requirements document that is included in the archive file containing this Call.

 

The current Call is a call for technology on 2 components of Digital Item Processing:

• Digital Item Base Operations.
• Digital Item Method Language

 

Details of how to obtain MPEG CfP’s and other public information is shown below.

 

 

 

2002-October: MPEG Completes IPMP for MPEG-4

Shanghai, China, 28 October 2002. At its 62^nd meeting, held from 21-25 October 2002, MPEG completed the final stage of its extensions to the MPEG-4 IPMP (Intellectual Property Management and Protection) technology. This important body of work, that saw a wide participation in its development, is important especially for those who wish to enable the complex consumption models demanded by today’s sophisticated consumers, while guaranteeing interoperability at a level of protected content.

MPEG is returning to its television roots and embarking on a long awaited technology exploration for the industry, that of 3D. In conjunction with its next meeting at the Awaji Yumebutai International Conference Center, in Awaji, Japan there will be a half day seminar sponsored jointly by the MPEG ad hoc on 3DAV, IMI (Intelligent Media Integration) of Nagoya University, and JEITA (Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industry Association). This exciting program will feature an international list of invited speakers, an exhibition of the latest in 3D technology, and a panel discussion. For the latest information and registration, please see the event page of MPEG web page: http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/events.htm.

As it has done in the past, MPEG will focus its efforts on coding solutions for 3D media. This will be accomplished with a combination of extensions to existing standards and the addition of key features to enable 3D. One of those new features will provide the viewer with the ability to select his or her own viewpoint.

MPEG systems specifications have been a key fixture of every MPEG standard dating back to MPEG-1. MPEG Systems standards have always been able to serve more than just MPEG Audio and Video, but now MPEG’s file format known to the industry as just MP4 File Format has gained acceptance across many industries sectors which rely on storing and transporting primarily audio/video content between and among devices and storage technology. The latest adopter is the SD Association (http://www.sdcard.org/). Others include 3GPP (http://www.3gpp.org/) and MPEG’s sister organization JPEG (http://www.jpeg.org/).

MPEG Audio has also taken a major step forward with the promotion of the amendment to MPEG-4 Audio called Audio Bandwidth Extensions to its final balloting stage. This technology, which is already in use by the internet radio industry will also see a complimentary amendment to MPEG-2 AAC (Part 7 of MPEG-2) being used widely by both the digital TV and audio industry.

 

Other MPEG news

MPEG reminds industry of outstanding calls due back shortly. Detailed information on each of these calls is available in the documents whose numbers are provided below.

1. Call for Proposal on Font format representation and font compression technology(N5289)
   All parties that believe they possess relevant technologies for MPEG-4 Systems font format representation are invited to submit proposals for consideration by MPEG. These parties do not necessarily have to be MPEG members. A full list explaining what proponents will be expected to submit can be found below.
2. Call for Proposals on MPEG-4 Lossless Audio Coding (N5208)
   This modified call asks for technology that achieves lossless compression of audio materials and which is scalable across a very a broad range of music representations: from current-generation consumer compact disk (i.e. 44.kHz 16-bit) to very-high fidelity next-generation distribution mechanisms (i.e. 192 kHz 24-bit). In addition, the call requests technology that is hierarchical, comprising an MPEG-4 lossy coder and the new technology, so that the new technology has the potential to leverage on the MPEG-4 lossy coded representation in order to achieve greater lossless compression.
3. Call for Information and Interest on Lossless Audio Coding for Oversampled One-Bit Representations (N5209)
   However, one-bit audio is of value as an audio archiving format both for materials that are originated in a one-bit format and as a format to which analogue recordings can be transferred. This transfer avoids many of the considerations involved in the preservation of analogue sound recordings whereby they are kept in controlled environments in their original forms. However the digitization of analogue source materials and production masters demands the highest standards in digital conversion technologies. The high quality formats to which analogue recordings are transferred comprise both LPCM techniques (to which the lossless compression technologies currently being examined by MPEG can be applied) and over-sampled one-bit representations.
   
   WG 11 solicits expressions of willingness to submit lossless audio coding technology that can be used for high quality audio archiving systems and professional audio systems.
   
   Submissions of comments and expressions of interest made in response to this Call should be made available to WG 11 before the 64^th MPEG meeting planned to be held on 10-14 March 2003.
4. Preliminary Call for Proposals on Digital Item Processing: Digital Item Base Operations and Digital Item Method Language (N5226).
   This Call addresses technology for Digital Item Processing as part of the MPEG-21 multimedia framework. MPEG has identified several components within Digital Item Processing: Digital Item Methods (DIMs), Digital Item Method Engine (DIME), Digital Item Base Operations (DIBO) and Digital Item Method Language (DIML). These components are introduced in the overall Digital Item Processing Requirements document that is included in the archive file containing this Call.
   
   The current Call is a call for technology on 2 components of Digital Item Processing:

·        Digital Item Base Operations.

·        Digital Item Method Language.

Details of how to obtain MPEG CfP’s and other public information is shown below.

 

 

2002-July: MPEG reaches milestones on two of its many projects

 

Klagenfurt, Austria, 29 July 2002. At its 61^st meeting, held from 22-26 July 2002, MPEG reached another important milestone for the joint video codec development effort with the ITU-T known as the Joint Video Team (JVT), that is developing a new and important video standard for industry. WG11 also announces the completion of the second specification in the suite of standards known as MPEG-21.

 

The new video coding standard being developed jointly with the ITU-T VCEG organization was promoted to Final Committee Draft (FCD), the second ballot stage leading to an ISO/IEC International Standard. This new standard will provide a significant improvement in compression performance for general video coding applications. For reference, the standard will be identified both as ITU-T Rec. H.264 and ISO/IEC 14496-10 “Advanced Video Coding”.

 

Also, Digital Item Identification (ISO/IEC FDIS 21000-3) was elevated to Final Draft International Standard and will become an International Standard following a 2 month ballot by JTC 1. This is another important milestone as MPEG has now standardized another in the suite of MPEG-21 Standards. The MPEG-21 DII allows the unique identification of digital items in the MPEG-21 framework.  The MDS Subgroup also completed the Committee Drafts of the MPEG-21 Rights Expression Language (REL) and MPEG-21 Rights Data Dictionary (RDD).  The MPEG-21 REL and RDD work together to allow the machine-readable expression of rights associated with the use of multimedia. These parts will be finalized by MPEG over the next year. Work on Digital Item Adaptation continued with the production of both a second working draft (WD).

 

In other important news from Klagenfurt,  MPEG reviewed 8 responses to its call for requirements on Persistent Association. A final requirements document will be issued at the 62^nd meeting in Shanghai, China in October which in turn may lead to a call for proposals on Persistent Association at a later date.

 

MPEG also processed responses to the Call for Advanced Text and Graphics and has issued a technology report as well as a request for additional input on font formats.

 

Other MPEG news

 

MPEG reminds industry of outstanding calls due back shortly.

1.      Call for Proposals for MPEG-4 Lossless Audio Coding. This call asks for technology that achieves lossless compression of audio materials and which is scalable across a very a broad range of music representations: from current-generation consumer compact disk (i.e. 44.kHz 16-bit) to very-high fidelity next-generation distribution mechanisms (i.e. 192 kHz 24-bit). In addition, the call requests technology that is hierarchical, comprising an MPEG-4 lossy coder and the new technology, so that the new technology has the potential to leverage on the MPEG-4 lossy coded representation in order to achieve greater lossless compression.

2.    The Multimedia Description Schema subgroup request for a Registration Authority has resulted in an SC29  “Request for Candidates for the Registration Authority for ISO/IEC 21000-3”. Responses should be forwarded directly to the SC29 Secretariat: Ms. Yukiko Ogura (ogura@itscj.ipsj.or.jp) or visit http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/ for information and details of this call.

 

Details of how to obtain MPEG’s CfP’s and other public information is shown below.

 

 

 

2002-May: MPEG CONTINUES ITS WORK ACROSS ALL ASPECTS OF ITS MULTIMEDIA CHARTER

Fairfax, Virginia, 15 May 2002. At its 60^th meeting, held from 6-10 May 2002, MPEG reached two important milestones, the completion of the first specification in the suite of standards known as MPEG-21 and the first ballot for its joint video codec development effort with the Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) known as the Joint Video Team (JVT), that is developing a new and important video standard for industry.

Digital Item Declaration (ISO/IEC FDIS 21000-2) was elevated to Final Draft International Standard and will become an International Standard following a 2 month ballot by JTC 1. This is an important milestone as MPEG has now standardized a fundamental model for the transaction of any content that may be referenced, including multimedia content. Subsequent standards in the MPEG-21 suite will use and further enable this framework by specifying Digital Item Identification, Intellectual Property Management and Protection, Rights Expression Language, Right Data Dictionary, Digital Item Adaptation and the MPEG-21 Reference Software. These parts will be finalized by MPEG over the next two years.

Also, the new video coding standard being developed jointly with the ITU-T was promoted to Committee Draft, the first ballot stage leading to an ISO/IEC International Standard. This new standard will provide a significant improvement in compression performance for general video coding applications. "I am very pleased with the work that the JVT has achieved in such a short time since it was formed in December of 2001." said Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, Convenor of the MPEG Committee. Dr. Gary Sullivan, Chair/Rapporteur of the JVT also expressed his congratulations to the team. "It has been very rewarding to see such a large group of experts collaborate on a complex topic. The group is to be congratulated." For reference, the standard will be identified both as ITU-T Rec. H.264 and ISO/IEC 14496-10 "Advanced Video Coding". In addition to the video work, MPEG Systems has begun the work needed to carry this new video standard in its existing systems multiplex standards, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4.

In other important news from Fairfax, MPEG reviewed 25 responses to its call for technologies on Digital Item Adaptation. MPEG has produced its first working draft containing technology needed to adapt digital items and their associated resources to a wide variety of consumer devices along with an adaptation software model to assist early adopters and implementers. Digital Item Adaptation is an important technology for content authors and owners, and service providers not just the consumers of MPEG streams. When coupled with the Audio-Visual standards of MPEG-2, or 4 and the metadata standard in MPEG-7, and the other standards being developed in MPEG-21, DIA as it has come to be known, will be another powerful tool in the multimedia industry. Combined with the specifications currently under development to provide a Rights Data Dictionary and a Rights Expression Language, this will provide tools to enable the association of permissions governing the context in which content may be adapted.

Other MPEG news

As reported from the last MPEG meeting MPEG-4 Audio Extension work continues. At the Fairfax meeting Audio Extension 1 progressed to Committee Draft. This provides technology for extending the bandwidth of existing MPEG-4 audio coders using a relatively small amount of side information.

MPEG continues to seek new technology and has issued a Call for Proposals on Advanced Text and 2D Graphics. MPEG has identified the need for extensions of the Systems part of the MPEG-4 standard. These requirements are mainly in the areas of Text representation and 2D graphics representation. Responses are due to MPEG by 16 July, in time to be considered at its next meeting from 22-26 July 2002, Klagenfurt, Austria.

MPEG reminds industry of outstanding calls due back shortly.

1. Call for Requirements for Persistent Association of Identification and Description with Content (N4682) published at the 59th Meeting in Jeju are due by Sunday 14th July 2002 prior to the 61st Meeting in Klagenfurt.

2. Call for Proposals for MPEG-7 Systems Extensions notably to address additional coding efficiency for MPEG-7 descriptions as well as MPEG-21 Digital Item Declarations. The response to these calls will be reviewed at its 61^st meeting in Klagenfurt, Austria from 22 to 26 July 2002

3. The Multimedia Description Schema subgroup request for a Registration Authority has resulted in an SC29 "Request for Candidates for the Registration Authority for ISO/IEC 21000-3". Responses should be forwarded directly to the SC29 Secretariat: Ms. Yukiko Ogura (ogura@itscj.ipsj.or.jp) or visit http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/ for information and details of this call.

 

 

2002-March: MPEG ISSUES A CALL FOR PROPOSALS ON DIGITAL ITEM ADAPTATION

Jeju Island, South Korea, March 15, 2002. At its 59^th meeting, held from 11-15 March 2002, MPEG issued its 4^th Call for Proposal (CfP) in the suite of standards known as MPEG-21. This latest call will accept proposals to be reviewed by experts at its 60^th meeting in Fairfax, VA (US) between 6 and 10 May 2002. In this world with a myriad of devices and new ones appearing daily, Digital Item Adaptation is an important technology for content authors and owners, and service providers not just the consumers of MPEG streams. When coupled with the Audio-Visual standards of MPEG-2, or 4 and the metadata standard in MPEG-7, and the other standards being developed in MPEG-21, DIA as it has come to be known, will be another powerful tool in the multimedia industry. Combined with the specifications currently under development to provide a Rights Data Dictionary and a Rights Expression Language, this will provide tools to enable the association of permissions governing the context in which content may be adapted.

MPEG also issued a Call for Proposals on MPEG-7 Systems extensions notably to address additional coding efficiency for MPEG-7 descriptions as well as MPEG-21 Digital Item Declarations. The response to these calls will be reviewed at its 61^st meeting in Klagenfurt, Austria from 22 to 26 July 2002.

Details of how to obtain MPEG’s CfP’s are shown below.

Other MPEG news

A preliminary Call for Proposals on Advanced Text and 2D graphics was issued. It will be made final the 60^th meeting In May with the expectation of responses due at the 61^st meeting in Austria in July.

The MPEG-21 development work on Rights Data Dictionary and Rights Expression Language (RDD/REL) began in earnest following technology selection in Pattaya, TH in December 2001. Use case scenarios leading to core experiments were developed by the RDD/REL experts. These included cases and corresponding rights expressions for video news syndication, music album release, and distribution combining digital items. The complexity and importance of this work was recognized as other elements of MPEG standards and development work began to be used in these use case scenarios, such as MPEG-7 descriptors and the MPEG-4 XMT technology.

Even MPEG-2 is getting into the act. An amendment to update the Conditional Access technology specified in MPEG-2 Systems (ISO/IEC 13818-1:2000) was initiated in Jeju Island. Known by the name used in MPEG-4 and MPEG-21, IPMP (INtellectual Property Management and Protection) for MPEG-2 is the first major upgrade of the standard in this area since MPEG-2 was finalized in 1994. "It is exciting to see MPEG-2 take on this new and important technology" said Dr. Chiariglione, Convenor of WG 11.

MPEG-4 Video reference software will become publicly available at a single Web site (http://megaera.ee.nctu.edu.tw/mpeg/). This will include the reference software from part 5 of MPEG-4, as well as an optimized package of encoder and decoder for MPEG-4 Visual Simple Profile.

MPEG-4 audio technology improvements continue as well. "Parametric Coding for High Quality Audio" was available following the Pattaya meeting and now "Backward Compatible Bandwidth Extension for General Audio Coding" is available. Both methods are expected to provide an additional bitrate saving of at least 25% over known coding methods.

 

 

2001

 

2001-December: MPEG STARTS DEVELOPMENT OF RIGHTS LANGUAGE, APPROVES JOINT VIDEO TEAM WITH ITU EXPERTS TO SET NEW VIDEO CODING STANDARD

Pattaya, Thailand, 7 December 2001. At its 58^th meeting, from 2-7 December 2001, MPEG reviewed 9 responses to its Call for Proposals on a Rights Data Dictionary and Rights Expression Language (RDD-REL) issued in July. This marks the beginning of the collaborative phase of this very important work, which is scheduled for International Standard in March 2003. The Rights Data Dictionary work will proceed from this meeting forward. In so-called ‘core experiments’, MPEG will refine the baseline architecture and the content of the Rights Expression Language to satisfy the extensive requirements for rights expression in a multimedia framework. A working draft of the RDD specification is available on the MPEG web site, and the REL working draft will be available shortly. The RDD and REL specifications will allow interoperable large-scale exchange of digital media, including subscription services, trusted peer-to-peer services and a wide variety of other distribution models.

The specifications are part of the MPEG-21 effort to specify a comprehensive, interoperable multimedia framework, which started in 1999. Other elements include a technical report also just finalized and soon to be published. Other work includes the ‘Digital Item Declaration’ and the Digital Item Identification & Description, and an interoperable architecture for Intellectual Property Management and Protection.

A historic joint partnership was established between ISO/IEC and the ITU at the Pattaya ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG meetings with the formation of a new Joint Video Team (JVT). This action reunites the powerful team of the same two organizations that designed the previous MPEG-2 video and systems standards (also known as ISO/IEC 13818, and ITU-T H.262 and H.222.0). The formation of the JVT follows the demonstration of significant advances in video compression technology by the VCEG H.26L project in tests conducted by MPEG just prior to its July meeting. The JVT project will take over the prior H.26L project of the ITU-T and will create a single interoperable solution for a next generation of standard video coding. The new standard design is expected to be approved by MPEG as a new part of MPEG-4 and by ITU-T as an ITU-T Recommendation. A key achievement expected from the JVT project is a substantial improvement in video coding efficiency for a broad range of application areas.

Other MPEG News

MPEG issued a Preliminary Call for Proposals for Digital Item Adaptation. This new element of MPEG-21 set will be a specification for tools that will allow adaptation of multimedia content to the environment in which it will be ‘consumed’ (e.g., read, watched, listened to). MPEG expects to standardize tools for describing the terminal, the network and user preferences. Many descriptive tools already exist in well-defined application spaces, and MPEG anticipates adopting those as a part of the specification. A final Call will be issued in March, and responses are invited for the May MPEG meeting in Fairfax, VA (US). The combination of content descriptions (in MPEG-7) and environment descriptions (in MPEG-21) will allow seamless, optimized delivery of content under many different and dynamically changing conditions.

The work on more interoperable IPMP (Intellectual Property Management and Protection) continued with a mapping to MPEG-2. This specification, an extension to the MPEG-2 Systems standard, is meant for usage in digital set top boxes and the increasingly popular ‘personal video recorders’. It will provide interoperable digital rights management in the broadcast space, where MPEG-2 is widely in use.

After completing Version 1 of the multimedia description framework MPEG-7 at its last (July) meeting, work has now begun on a second version. This extension to version will, among other elements, include a scheme for linguistic descriptions. Such a description scheme allows the formal description of the linguistic aspects of multimedia content – in other words, it allows a formal description of, e.g., the speech in a film. Such a description scheme can be included in a more comprehensive audiovisual description.

The MPEG committee has completed its standard for the carriage of MPEG-4 over IP-based networks – the Internet. In principle, MPEG-4 does not define a native transport multiplex like MPEG-2 did. This standard recognizes the pervasive nature of the Internet and the need for transporting MPEG-4 content over IP in a well-defined, interoperable fashion. The work was done in collaboration with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

 

 

2001-July: MPEG-7 Finalized

Sydney, July 2001– At its 57^th meeting, from 16-20 July 2001 in Sydney, Australia, the MPEG-7 Standard was finalized and approved. The MPEG-7 Standard defines highly structured textual and a binary forms for describing multimedia content, from low-level features (colors, shapes, sound frequencies) to high level, semantic information.

MPEG progressed its specification for interoperable Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) to Committee Draft. IPMP is MPEG’s term for Digital Rights Management. This specification will allow managed and protected content to be used across compliant devices. This IPMP specification, a part of the MPEG-21 standard, will allow protected content to be used across compliant devices. When completed it can be used with MPEG-4, MPEG-7 'metadata' and when extended it will also include MPEG-2 content.

MPEG reviewed the results of its open video compression viewing tests, and concluded that there is evidence for advances in video coding technology that warrant the start of a new video coding project.  MPEG is discussing with ITU-T Study Group 16 the formation of a Joint Video Team (JVT) to carry out this new project. For MPEG, this project will result in a new part of the MPEG-4 Standard, which is scheduled for completion in spring 2003.

News on MPEG-4 – the Object-based Multimedia Coding Standard

'Having seen significant technological advances, we have decided to extend MPEG-4 with state-of-the art technology. In this way, we continue to serve the evolving needs of the industry', said Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, Convener (chairman) of MPEG, on the decision to add a new part to MPEG-4. 'MPEG-4 Version 1 was finalized in 1998, and is adopted by a growing number of companies and consortia. Incorporating new technology in MPEG-4 means that industry can protect its investments in MPEG-4 while using improved technology'.

Dr. Gary Sullivan, rapporteur for video coding work in ITU-T SG16 and chairman of MPEG's Video Group said, 'We are working toward creating a new joint standardization project to extend the frontiers of video compression. It’s exciting to think what this world-class team of ITU-T and MPEG coding experts could achieve.'

On the other end of the bitrate spectrum, MPEG reviewed the results of the Digital Cinema viewing tests, which took place at the ETC Theater in Hollywood, end of June. Under test were 5 proposals, with the MPEG-4 Studio Profile used as anchor. These were evaluated for their ability to transparently code digital video for digital cinema distribution purposes. These groundbreaking tests – first of their kind –produced results that, while still being studied, allowed MPEG to take the preliminary decision to use MPEG-4 Studio Profile as the starting point, and to look at technology in other proposals to improve the efficiency in so-called ‘Core Experiments’. A similar situation applies to the archival format, which has as a requirement that it is bitwise lossless. Most of the proposals gave the comparable efficiency, and it is unclear whether any standardization project is necessary, or whether existing ISO standards suffice.

MPEG also examined the results of an Audio Call for Proposals, asking for technology that improves MPEG-4 performance through extensions. Specifically, MPEG seeks to further enhance performance around the 24 kbit/s range by examining two technologies. The first is parametric coding of high-quality audio signals, and the initial technology has been selected at the Sydney meeting. The second is bandwidth extension of high-quality audio signals in a backward and forward compatible way, which means that existing decoders can decode enhanced bitstreams, and new decoders can keep decoding existing streams. The initial technology for this work will be selected at the December meeting.

MPEG issued a Call for Contributions to develop a "Reference Hardware Description" for MPEG-4; the first step in a collaborative effort to provide a VHDL description of MPEG-4. A VHDL description of the MPEG-4 tool set will greatly facilitate the deployment of the standard on mixed software-hardware implementations.

News on MPEG-7 – the Multimedia Content Description Standard

The MPEG-7 standard was promoted to Final Draft International Standard. The text of the standard is final and, and what remains is a 2 month period for formal approval of this text by ISO member countries.

The Audio and Video parts of MPEG-7 define technology for audio and visual characteristics in content, such as color, shape, sound effects, melody, etc. The Multimedia Description Schemes part gives structured schema for hierarchically describing content, using metadata and the audio and visual signal characteristics from the other parts. The Description Definition Language (DDL) is a language to define new Description Schemes or extend existing ones. ‘MPEG-7 Systems’ provides technology for MPEG-7 Descriptions to be packaged, and for preparing a stream to be transport-ready by converting it a compressed binary format.. Together these parts form a solid basis across multimedia search, filter, retrieval and management applications.

The amendment to MPEG-2 Systems that specifies how to carry metadata over MPEG-2 Transport Streams has been extended to take full advantage of MPEG-7’s unique real-time and streaming capabilities. The amendment will provide a very tight link between MPEG-2 content and MPEG-7 Descriptions. (Note that such a link was built into MPEG-4 from the very beginning.)

News on MPEG-21 – the Multimedia Framework

MPEG issued a Call for Proposals for a Rights Expression Language (REL) and a Rights Data Dictionary (RDD), after finalizing its requirements study. Technology proposals are invited by 21 November ’01, and will be evaluated during the December MPEG meeting in Pattaya, Thailand. The REL and RDD will be the 5^th and 6^th part of MPEG-21. The first part, a Technical Report on MPEG-21, was also finalized at this meeting, after a favorable ballot. The second part, the ‘Digital Item Declaration (DID)’ was promoted to Committee Draft, going to the first official ballot stage of three. The DID provides the tools to create a uniform, hierarchical description of how content of composed of resources, ad applies from elements (e.g., an mp3 track or an image) to complete collections. The DID is built on a normative XML Schema, and allows the Digital Item (content) to be used, managed, collected, etc. The third part of MPEG-21 standard is the Digital Item Identification and Description, which defines a unique identifier for multimedia content, and resolution mechanisms to allow discovery of (rights) information about the content. The fourth part deals with generic IPMP.

 

2001-March:

Singapore, March 2001– At its 56^th meeting, from 5-9 March 2001 in Singapore, MPEG issued a Call for Proposals for Digital Cinema video coding technology. The technology will be used to build a standard for the audio-visual aspects Digital Cinema. Proposals are requested for both visually lossless coding (for distribution) and truly lossless coding (for archiving). 19 Companies have so far pre-registered as submitters. Subjective tests for the distribution format are scheduled to take place at the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center at the Hollywood Pacific Theatre in Los Angeles, California, USA.

MPEG also re-issued its Call for Requirements for a Rights Expression Language and a Rights Data Dictionary, and expects to publish a Call for Proposals at its July, meeting in Sydney, Australia.

News on MPEG-21 – the Multimedia Framework

Working from 15 submissions in response to a Call for Proposals, a first Working Draft for ‘Digital Item Identification and Description’ (DIID) was issued. This part of the MPEG-21 standard will uniquely identify multimedia content and elements within that content according to international standards for identifiers (ISAN, the International Standard Audiovisual Number). Also, the work provides for a high quality resolution mechanism that allows robust and trustworthy retrieval of information associated with the content, including rights information. Together with the MPEG-21 Rights Language and Data Dictionary, these elements will provide powerful tools for automated expression of rights pertaining to digital content/ This will facilitate electronic trade of all such content.

 As well, the second Working Draft of the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration was issued, giving a uniform and flexible abstraction and interoperable schema for declaring Digital Items. Within the MPEG-21 framework, a Digital Item is defined as a structured digital object with a standard representation, identification and description. It is also the fundamental unit of distribution and transaction within this framework.

News on MPEG-7 – the Multimedia Content Description Standard

The five main parts of the MPEG-7 Standard (Systems, Description Definition Language [DDL], Audio, Visual, and Multimedia Description Schemes [MDS]) were promoted to Final Committee Draft (FCD). These specifications represent stable technology, and multi-media industry can now form its opinion on what MPEG-7 will deliver. The Audio and Video parts define technology for audio and visual characteristics in content, such as color, shape, sound effects, melody, etc. The MDS part gives structured schema for hierarchically describing content, using metadata and the audio and visual signal characteristics from the other parts. The DDL is a language to define new Description Schemes or extend existing ones. ‘Systems’ provides technology for packaging MPEG-7 Descriptions into transport ready binary form. Together these five parts form a solid basis for many multimedia search, filter, retrieval and management applications.

News on MPEG-4 – the Object-based Multimedia Coding Standard

MPEG-4’s Registration authority for Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) systems is up and running (www.ipmp-ra.org). DRM providers can now register themselves and their systems through this registration authority, which is run by CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. CISAC has been involved in MPEG since MPEG-2, and active in the identification of rights embodied in MPEG encoded content. Registration provides a unique number that can be carried in the bitstream convey which IPMP system is needed to access the content. The activity on a more interoperable Digital Rights Management solution in MPEG4 continues. The solution will be generic enough to apply to other MPEG standards as well – MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 content, but also MPEG-7 descriptions.

 The 3^rd Generation Partnership Platform, 3GPP, has adopted the MPEG-4 MP4 File structure for its Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). JPEG has chosen the MP4 file format for packing pictures and annotations together. MPEG will assign a registration authority so that other bodies can take the file format, brand it to their own needs, and use it without conflicts with other MP4 file brands. MPEG-4 is extending the file format to further facilitate streaming on RTP/UDP/IP protocols.

 The MPEG-4 Audio 2001 Edition was issued at this meeting. This document contains the full specification of MPEG-4 Audio with all its amendments and corrigenda to date integrated in a single well-organized document. This will be a great aid to implementers of the MPEG-4 Audio technology.

 MPEG will review the results of subjective audio and video tests in July and decide whether new standardization efforts for coding technology are warranted by these demonstrations of improved coding technology.

 Part 8 of MPEG-4, the specification of how to carry MPEG-4 content on IP networks, progressed to Committee Draft. Work on payload formats progresses in the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF). These important specifications are the result joint work between MPEG and IETF.  

 

 

2001-January: New MPEG-4 Video Profiles for Studio and Internet Streaming
Call for Requirements for Rights Language and Data Dictionary

Pisa, Italy, January 2001– At its 55^th meeting from 15-19 January 2001 in Pisa, Italy, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) issued a Call for Requirements for a Rights Description Language and a Rights Data Dictionary. When the Requirements are clearer, MPEG may issue a Call for Proposals and proceed with standardization. The objective is to specify an interoperable language that can describe the rights of all parties involved in exchanging and consuming multimedia content, from creators to consumers. Recognizing how sizable this task is, MPEG looks forward to collaboration with other forums that are undertaking similar harmonization efforts.

 MPEG finished and approved its extension on MPEG-4 Video Coding using Fine Granular Scalability, and the Advanced Simple Profile, a profile optimized for Internet Streaming. The Advanced Simple Profile can be used in conjunction with the long awaited Fine Granular Scalability; together they form an excellent and high quality solution for standards-based Internet streaming under many different circumstances. At the other end of the bitrate spectrum, MPEG issued its final text for the Simple and Core Studio Profiles, with bitrates from 50 Mbit/s to 1.2 Gbit/s.

 On Saturday 10 March, an MPEG-7 Awareness Event will be organized in the Pan Pacific Hotel in Singapore. The event will bring tutorials on MPEG-7 and show many demonstrations of applications and systems that utilize the MPEG-7 Content Description Standard under development. The program is being finalized; announcements will be made on http://www.mpeg‑7.com/ and MPEG’s website (see below).

 News on MPEG-21 – the Multimedia Framework

The first element of MPEG-21, the Digital Item Declaration, moved from the Requirements phase to the Specification phase. The Digital Item is the digital representation of “a work” in MPEG-21, and the Declaration is a uniform abstraction for declaring Digital Items. A declaration is usually multi-level, hierarchical description of the elements of the Digital Item, and it includes such information as in what form(s) the content is available (e.g., ‘mp3’, ‘aac’ for an Audio track), annotations and where the bits can be found. This first part of the MPEG-21 Standard will now enter the collaboration phase; it is scheduled to be frozen at the end of this year.

 The MPEG-21 Proposed Draft Technical Report was issued in its Version 1.2. MPEG has decided to submit the proposal to National Bodies for an extra round of comments before finalizing the Technical Report.

News on MPEG-7 – the Multimedia Content Description Standard

An MPEG-2 extension is underway, that specifies how MPEG-7 data and other types of metadata can be carried in MPEG-2 Transport Streams. This will allow the broadcasting of content descriptions synchronous with the content itself.

The goal of the new “Phonetic Description Scheme is to overcome the limitation of Text-To-Speech interfaces or Speech recognition systems, by validating the usefulness of describing MPEG-7 data by phonetic elements. For example, Human Machine Interfaces based on a single language cannot handle words pronounced in a different language. Text-To-Speech interfaces have many difficulties to handle names, title in non-native languages, abbreviations, etc.

MPEG-4 – the Object-based Multimedia Coding Standard

At the previous meeting, MPEG started work on a more interoperable specification for “Intellectual Property Management and Protection”. The first step entails a method for mutual authentication of tools for e.g. decryption and watermarking. Also, a way is being defined for a terminal to obtain missing protection tools - to be authenticated by the player after they have been obtained. This work will help preventing fragmentation in the market caused by multiple, non-interoperable ways of protecting content.

 Following the ‘Call for Evidence’ of end 2000, a ‘Call for Proposals’ (CfP) was issued at this meeting asking for submission of new video compression tools, which will be formally tested against MPEG-4 video. The call can be found on MPEG web page, see below. Subjective testing will be conducted in July 2001. The objective is to make sure MPEG keeps following technological advances in compression technology. Depending on the test results, MPEG may decide either to not take further action, to enhance the MPEG-4 visual standard, or to develop a new video coding standard.

 In a similar work, MPEG reviewed the response to the “Call for Evidence Justifying the Testing of Audio Coding Technology.” Based on the evidence, MPEG issued “Call For Proposals for New Tools for Audio Coding” focusing on 1) technology that improves compression efficiency of audio or speech by extending the bandwidth in a fashion compatible with existing MPEG-4 technology and 2) technology that improves compression efficiency of high-quality audio signals by means of parametric coding, preferably building upon the existing MPEG-4 tools. A formal testing procedure will determine if proposals warrant extension of the MPEG-4 Standard. The response to this Call for Proposals will be reviewed at the July MPEG meeting.

A new edition (ISO/IEC 14496-3:2001) of the MPEG-4 Audio will incorporate all amendments, know corrections and clarifications to date. This should be available in March.

The text of MPEG-4 Audio conformance is now complete, and 75% of the involved bitstreams are available. The Audio Conformance tests are designed to fully exercise each of the MPEG-4 Audio Profiles and rigorously test implementations of these Profiles.

 A new project on MPEG-4 Multi-users technology was started after receiving answers to the Multi- User World Call for Proposals. The result will be an extension to MPEG-4 part 1 (Systems).

 MPEG reached a consensus on how to transport MPEG-4 content on IP Networks; a new part of the MPEG-4 standard (part 8) will normatively describe this method.

 MPEG sent out a Preliminary Call for the Expression of Interest in Submitting Hardware Reference Code for another new MPEG-4 Part, 9: Reference Hardware Description. MPEG will focus on reference hardware descriptions that address computational and memory bottlenecks. MPEG further seeks submissions of reference VHLD (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language) code at a low functional level, to facilitate the deployment of MPEG-4 on mixed software hardware platforms.

 

 

2000

 

2000-November: MPEG Defines Binary Form for efficient streaming and storage of MPEG-7/ XML Data

Standard interfaces for Renewability of DRM in MPEG-4

La Baule, France, November 2000 – At its 54^th meeting, the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) wrote the first draft of a revolutionary binary format for MPEG-7, which will allow fast streaming of MPEG-7/XML data and a number of other features that are very difficult to achieve with a text-based representation. The binary descriptions of content can now be sent progressively, adding more detail as more data arrives, and on top of that, the binary format allows very rapid random access. Efficient representation and random access to all types of metadata is crucially important because metadata repositories will be of enormous size. The Binary format is part of the first official publication of the MPEG-7 Standard, the ‘Committee Draft’. MPEG-7 will progress through 3 more stages, to be frozen in July 2001.

The Call for Proposals for technology for ‘Intellectual Property Management and Protection’ resulted in 14 high quality proposals for additional standardization in MPEG. There is broad consensus on standardizing additional interfaces in MPEG-4; these will notably address renewability of IPMP tools (watermarking, cryptographic algorithms, etc.), without standardizing the tools themselves. Users will benefit from this, because it will become easier to create interoperable secure systems, which will result in more transparent access to valuable content.

The first two Calls for Proposals for MPEG-21 (Multimedia Framework) were issued: one for ‘Digital Item Declaration’ and one for ‘Digital Item Identification and Description’. The first Call requests technology that describes how content packages are structured as digital objects with a standard representation, identification and description within the MPEG-21 framework. The second Call asks for technology to uniquely and persistently identify and describe digital content items. Both calls are the first technological steps towards the goal of MPEG-21: to describe a multimedia framework of standards that together ensure open and interoperable access to multimedia content. Many elements of such a framework exist, and MPEG-21 will try to harmonize these and see that the necessary glue is provided, either by MPEG or by other appropriate bodies.

MPEG-21 News

With the two Calls for Proposals (CfP) that were issued at the meeting, the technical work for MPEG-21, the technical work has started. The responses to the ‘Digital Item Declaration’ CfP are due at the January meeting, while the responses for the Digital Item Identification and Description CfP are expected in March.

MPEG-7 News

Six of the seven parts of the MPEG-7 Standard (Systems, Description Definition Language, Visual, Audio, Multimedia Description Schemes, Reference Software) reached their first public draft status in La Baule: Committee Draft, or ‘CD’. This Draft will be balloted by the ISO member countries. Two more such ballots follow; the MPEG-7 Standard will be frozen in July 2001. The 7^th part, Conformance Testing, is scheduled to follow the other parts a year later.

MPEG has decided to include, in MPEG-7, ‘Description Schemes’ for Electronic Ink documents. MPEG recognizes the demands arising from the currently emerging markets for pen-based systems and electronic whiteboards. Electronic ink data occupies a unique place among visual data objects. It represents handwritten text, formulas, graphics and drawing. Electronic Ink data description involves visual, semantic information as well as the characterization of the dynamic nature of handwriting and drawing.

First technology was specified in the MPEG-7 Visual CD that allows extracting descriptors for the purpose of recognizing and identifying faces in images and video. MPEG issued a Call for Proposals (CfP) for Face Recognition Technology, to identify and compare new technology in this domain with existing face descriptors in MPEG-7. MPEG intends to standardize extended and improved face descriptors in a future edition of MPEG-7. Results of the call will be evaluated at the March 2001 MPEG meeting.

The Audio Committee Draft (CD) contains a range of meta-data technology from singular descriptors to description schemes, which are sets of descriptors that work together. Some of the low-level, generic audio descriptors in the CD are fundamental frequency, spectrum envelopes and spectral centroid. One of the simpler description schemes is Timbre Description, which uses a set of descriptors to describe the distinctive characteristics of the musical instruments based on their recorded signals. This is used in identifying segments of other recorded signals that contain similar sounding instruments. The Spoken Content description scheme is more complex. It is designed to represent the output of a great number of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system, which might contain both words and phoneme representations of the speech content, together with transition likelihoods from one sound unit to another. This ameliorates a problem with ASR systems: uncertain word recognition and out-of-vocabulary words. Using this rich representation, one can get excellent results from a key-word query on a database of annotated spoken content even when the annotation may have uncertainty or even incorrect speech recognition results.

The MPEG-7 Reference Software known as eXperimentation Model (XM) is a platform for implementing applications of the emerging MPEG-7 standard. The software has a modular design, and supports search & retrieval as well as transcoding applications (e.g., transforming a full resolution video into a short multimedia summary). The current revision of the XM software can be found at cvs@cvshost.krdl.org.sg. From time to time a snapshot from the current version of the XM software is taken and can be downloaded from the Web site: http://www.lis.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de/research/bv/topics/mmdb/mpeg7.html

MPEG-4 News

MPEG has started to make a standard portable VHDL (hardware description language) reference code for the MPEG-4 Standard. This is a sizeable but very important task that will greatly help implementers and chip makers to work together in building MPEG-4 systems. MPEG expects benefits especially in the mobile multimedia market, where relatively much of the technology needs to be hardwired.

Recognizing the growing industry acceptance of the MPEG-4 video standard in various application domains, MPEG makes every effort to ensure that those who employ MPEG standards benefit from the best compression technology in existence. Hence, MPEG has decided to study whether new video compression technology exists that warrants standardization, and a Call for Proposals (CfP) was issued at this meeting asking for submission of new video compression tools. In February 2001, these will be formally tested against existing MPEG-4 video coding technology. The results will be discussed at the March 2001 MPEG meeting. Depending of the outcome MPEG may decide either to not take further action, to enhance the MPEG-4 visual standard, or to develop a new video coding standard.

Work started on the MPEG-4 Animation Framework extension, AFX. AFX–pronounced "effects"–defines extended representation and compression for advanced, high quality animation services, both in 2D and 3D.The MPEG-4 AFX spec is scheduled for delivery by October 2002. It will provide the latest animation technology for traditional and online graphics industries. The AFX specification is being developed in cooperation with the Web3D Consortium (www.web3d.org)

 

2000-June:  MPEG to launch the MPEG-7 Industry Focus Group

 

Geneva, Switzerland, 20 June 2000 – At the 52^nd MPEG meeting in Geneva, CH, the Moving Picture Experts Group launched, even before the release of the awaited content description standard MPEG-7, the MPEG-7 Industry Focus Group. MPEG participants will grant access to their technology giving industry a unique opportunity to view and review the emerging, standard-based solutions.

 

As industries gravitate towards multimedia rich working environments, the usage of all kinds audio-visual content representations (streaming video, sophisticated audio canvas, visual summarization, etc.) is getting commonplace. Whether a user, content provider, or both, everybody has to cope with the main challenge this situation poses: quality access to content which implies good storage solutions, high-performance content identification, and fast, ergonomic and accurate search & retrieval.

 

The MPEG-7 standard, child of the acclaimed MPEG community, is taking final shape. When released in 2001, it will offer rich development opportunities in a domain of multimedia content management. MPEG display the most promising and comprehensive approach to content identification, indexing, access & retrieval, distribution under the principle of interoperability.

 

In order to capitalize on this opportunity, MPEG members come forward with an unprecedented initiative: They will grant limited access to their work to representatives of every industry participating in content wealth-creation and interested in fine tuning of the MPEG-7 standard to ever-changing needs of their industry. The MPEG-7 Industry Focus Group will create a platform enabling a continuous two-way exchange of ideas between MPEG developers and industry.

 

The public start of the MPEG-7 Industry Focus Group activities will be marked by the first workshop, to take place this autumn in Paris, France. All information is available on the MPEG-7 Industry Focus Group web site located at http://www.mpeg-7.com.

 

In the meantime, MPEG’s Audio subgroup began a experiments on metadata for the description of melody.  This will test the ability of the proposed MPEG-7 metadata to support the classic “query-by-humming” retrieval problem: you hum a tune, which is then used by a search engine to retrieve the music you are looking for.

 

MPEG-7 Descriptions efficient and in real-time

To support the efficient use of MPEG-7 in content delivery and broadcast environments, a binary and streamable representation of MPEG-7 descriptions is being developed MPEG is working from proposals from companies as Apple, Sony, Robert Bosch GmbH, and the Heinrich Herz Institute. The deadline for submitting new proposals on such technology is set to be the 54^th MPEG meeting in October 2000.

 

From several standardization efforts, such as SMPTE, the TV Anytime Forum and MPEG-7, Metadata specifications are becoming available. To avoid region specific or application specific solutions for carriage of such metadata in MPEG-2 environments, MPEG has started an amendment to MPEG-2 Systems to make one unique, generic solution for carriage of such metadata in MPEG-2 so-called ‘Transport Streams’.

 

MPEG-4 on the Internet towards a more complete specification

For the transport of MPEG-4 over IP so far only incomplete specifications have been developed. Therefore, in order to help the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF), MPEG propose a framework that includes all the necessary elements (RTP payload format[s], SDP signaling and RTSP control). This document will be submitted by MPEG members as an Internet Draft to the next IETF meeting in August 2000. It is expected that implementation and verification of the Internet Draft can start immediately after the August IETF meeting, so that a fast progression of the Internet Draft to RFC (‘Internet Standard’)status can be started at the December 2000 IETF meeting.

 

 

2000_July: MPEG Issues Call for Proposals on Intellectual Property Management and Protection Solutions for MPEG-4 Digital Multimedia

MPEG-21 Report Describes Elements for Interoperable Multimedia Framework

 

Beijing, China, 21 July 2000 – At the 53^rd meeting of the Moving Picture Experts Group, MPEG issued a Call for Proposals for intellectual property management and protection solutions for MPEG-4 multimedia applications. At its next meeting in October 2000, MPEG will evaluate these proposals for secure delivery and consumption of MPEG-4 Content.

The approval of the first version of the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework marks another milestone for MPEG. This so-called ‘Proposed Draft Technical Report’ specifies seven areas in which further standardization is believed required for enabling an open infrastructure for multimedia content. MPEG will start the necessary specification activity with issuing Calls for Proposals for these areas at its upcoming meetings.

 

The MPEG-21 Technical Report lists the technological elements that will enable ‘the delivery and use of all content types by different categories of users in multiple application domains’. It covers such topics as content representation and coding, content identification and description, content management and use, delivery, content-related intellectual property, and reporting of content-related events. Based on the technical report, MPEG will identify elements that need further standardization to build an interoperable multimedia framework. MPEG is pursuing this goal in cooperation with other standardization efforts.

 

Calls for Evidence on New Coding Technology

In response to the MPEG-4 Video ‘Call for Evidence’ issued in the March 2000 meeting, several contributions on new tools for improved video coding efficiency were presented. Results indicate that there may be technology that can improve coding efficiency. MPEG has decided to proceed with a study to see whether indeed new technology exists that warrants standardization. For this purpose, a preliminary Call for Proposals (CfP) was issued at this meeting asking for submission of new video compression tools, which will be formally tested against optimized MPEG-4 video. A final CfP will be issued in October 2000 and subjective testing will be conducted in February 2001. The results will be discussed at the March 2001 MPEG meeting. Depending of the outcome MPEG may decide either to not take further action, to enhance the MPEG-4 visual standard, or to develop a new video coding standard.

 

The same Call for evidence that was issued for Video technology at the last meeting, was now also made for Audio technology. MPEG wants to learn whether formal testing of audio coding schemes is justified, and asks interested parties to provide, before the January meeting, clear evidence that their technology outperforms MPEG-4 technology.  MPEG will determine if any of proposed technologies represents an improvement significant enough to warrant further quality assessment via a formal subjective test.

MPEG-4: Multi-User Worlds and Video coding for the Studio

New MPEG-4 video coding technology, to become International standard early 2001, addresses very high bit rate and quality studio requirements. It allows composition of multiple video objects and graphic backgrounds to create an output video. At the same time, fine granularity (small step) scalability technology will be added to MPEG-4 Video. This ‘FGS’ technology was originally developed to ease delivery of Internet video, but it will also enable statistical multiplexing of pre-encoded content in ‘statistical multiplexers’ for satellite broadcast. Therefore, this type of scalability supports low to high (broadband) bit rates.

 

A Call for Proposals asks for technology for ‘Multi-User Worlds’: three-dimensional, virtual environments in which a group of people can meet and interact with one another. MPEG-4 already includes the technology needed to represent the ‘virtual people’ (through face and body animation) and the environment itself, but still lacks some of the tools to allow multi-user interaction, such as sharing protocols for multimedia objects and multi-user event management.

 

MPEG-7 (The content description standard)

New work on the carriage of MPEG-7 metadata and descriptions in MPEG-2 Transport Streams (e.g., digital broadcasts) and Program Streams (DVD) will enable the association of metadata with audiovisual programming. The specification will allow a tight link between the audiovisual data and the metadata. For example metadata can be associated to items in a news program, describing these items, or to a sports match, indicating important events. The association can be very precise: metadata can be associated with an entire program, but also with a three seconds shot or even a single video frame.

 

MPEG-7 will support a new type of query – the ‘semantic query’. It was already possible to do searches for keywords or to perform a ‘query by sketch’, but now users can also search with queries like ‘give me the scenes in which a police car passes in front of a garage with its siren blaring’.

 

 

2000-March: MPEG-4 Streaming Video Profiles defined

Textual Format for MPEG-4 upcoming

Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands, 28 March 2000 – At the 51^st MPEG meeting in Noordwijkerhout, NL, the Moving Picture Experts Group defined a new MPEG-4 profile for streaming frame-based video. This will significantly promote the development and use of streaming video applications on the Internet, that inter-operate across different platforms (PCs, Set Top boxes etc) and different operating systems. The profile boasts the so-called Fine Granular Scalability techniques, that after 1,5 years of work are now stable and optimized. With this type of scalability, content can seamlessly adapt itself to different and dynamic network and decoder load. The quality increases in small steps as layers of extra information are added when, e.g., the available bandwidth increases.

Work is being harmonized with the TV-Anytime initiative (www.tv-anytime.org); MPEG-7 is working to support the Personal Video Recorder infrastructure that TV-Anytime seeks to standardize.

A textual specification is being added to the binary MPEG-4 representation. With this, content authors can exchange MPEG-4 content in an editable form. The work has started from two proposals, one based on Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML, see www.web3d.org) the other on W3C's Synchonized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL, see www.w3.org).

MPEG-21 Workshop

MPEG-21 looks at the delivery of electronic content, trying to fit together the many pieces of the puzzle that already exist. The 2-day open workshop with many participants from industrial fora was a considerable success. Based on the contributions, the work on MPEG-21 work has been started, in the form of drafting a technical report that describes the puzzle and names the missing pieces. The presentations will be available on MPEG's home page (www.cselt.it/mpeg) shortly.

MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes

Two new Description Schemes were introduced in experiments: Collection DS and User Preferences DS. The Collection DS allows the description of groupings and relationships for multimedia documents and collections based on structural, semantic, media, and meta information. As an example, a music collection can be clustered according to the period the music was created, according to the authors, or according to the type of melody. A collection of images or video can be organized on the basis of the topic or the genre. The User Preferences DS supports the means to specify user's preferences in browsing, filtering and searching multimedia material.

MPEG-4 usage in communication and Internet services

MPEG is pleased to learn that ITU-T (SG16) has added MPEG-4 Systems and Audio codepoints for ITU-T H.324 (circuit switched) communication terminals. Since Visual Codepoints were already added before, all MPEG-4 technology can now be used in these terminals. ITU also plans to add MPEG-4 Audio/Visual elementary stream RTP payloads to the recommendation for packet-based (Internet) networks, after these have been standardized by the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF). This means that MPEG-4 can be used in Internet communications, where H.323 is widely used. The current draft Internet (IETF) standard has been tested and confirmed to operate correctly and reliably. These tests were carried out by two independent organizations for Audio and four independent organizations for Visual.

MPEG-4 Studio Quality Video

New MPEG-4 technology for compressing video in studio applications were refined and an addition to the MPEG-4 Standard was initiated. This technology allows efficient coding of video sequences with up to 2K x2K pixels per frame. The bit rate can be as high as 1.2 Gb/s for video with studio quality requirements. The efficiency and functionality of this technology surpasses that of the MPEG-2 standard. As an important functionality explicit coding of shape information in the studio will be supported. The work will be finalized in January 2001.

MPEG-4 Animation Framework

MPEG has issued a Call for Proposals for animation techniques for 2D and 3D models. These models ('meshes') are already supported in MPEG-4, but more efficient ways to do animation exist. The Web3D consortium (www.web3d.org) and MPEG have agreed to develop jointly this framework to support mutual goals of convergence. Proposals are due by 15 September 2000.

New video compression technology?

The "Call for evidence" issued in December 1999 which asks for new video compression technology to be submitted to MPEG is still in effect; submissions will be evaluated in July 2000. If convincing evidence is received, MPEG will proceed with formal subjective tests.

 

 

1999

 

 

1999-December: