Source:
Convenor
of mpeg
Status:
Approved
by WG11
Subject:
MPEG Press Release
Date:
July
2001
ISO/IEC
JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 N4140
July
2001 – Sydney
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Source: |
Convenor
of mpeg |
|
|
Status: |
Approved
by WG11 |
|
|
Subject: |
MPEG Press Release |
|
|
Date: |
July
2001 |
Sydney, July
2001– At
its 57th 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.
'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.)
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 5th and 6th 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.
Further
information
Future MPEG meetings will be
held as follows: 22-26 October 2001 (Washington DC, USA), 3-7 December (Pattaya,
Thailand), 11-15 March 2002 (Cheju, South Korea), 22-26 July 2002 (Klagenfurt,
Austria).
For further
information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr.
Leonardo Chiariglione, (Convenor of MPEG, Italy)
Telecom
Italia Lab
Via G. Reiss Romoli, 274
10148 Torino, ITALY
Tel.: +39 11 228 6120; Fax: +39 11 228 6299
Email: leonardo.chiariglione@tilab.com
or
Rob Koenen (Chairman MPEG Requirements
Group)
InterTrust Technologies Corporation
Tel +1 (408) 855 6891
Email: rob.koenen@ieee.org
This press release and much other
MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG
homepage:
http://www.cselt.it/mpeg
For the
Outstanding Call for Proposals, see the Hot News section, http://www.cselt.it/mpeg/hot_news.htm
The MPEG
homepage has links to other MPEG pages, which are maintained by some of the
subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available
for download to non-MPEG members.