Remember When ... ?

--taken from here

IEEE Software is 25 years old! For a special anniversary edition, we're looking for anecdotes on how IEEE Software has helped you over the years.

Has it helped you advance your career, overcome challenges, or keep up with new trends?
Have you used the content in a course you taught? Has it inspired you to adopt a new technique?
Has it pointed you to directions or resources you didn't know about?
Has it ever helped your project overcome a problem? Has it affected the way your organization operates?
Has it caused you to see software development or the profession in a new light?

Send your stories, up to 500 words, to software@computer.org with subject line "25th anniversary" by 22 September 2008.

The Semantics of MPEG-21 Digital Items Revisited

Quite recently our paper has been accepted by the 2nd International Workshop on the Many Faces of Multimedia Semantics which is part of ACM Multimedia 2008. The abstract and reference is given below and for rest I will hopefully meet you in Vancouver end of October'08.

Abstract

The MPEG-21 standard forms a comprehensive multimedia framework covering the entire multimedia distribution chain. In particular, it provides a flexible approach to represent, process, and transact complex multimedia objects which are referred to as Digital Items (DIs). DIs can be quite generic, independent of the application domain, and can encompass a diversity of media resources and metadata. This flexibility has an impact on the level of interoperability between systems and applications, since not all the functionality needs to be implemented. Furthermore, additional semantic rules may be implemented through the processing of the Digital Item which is possibly driven by proprietary metadata. This jeopardizes interoperability and consequently raises barriers to the successful achievement of augmented and transparent use of multimedia resources. In this context, we have investigated and evaluated the interoperability at the semantic level of Digital Items throughout the automated production, delivery and consumption of complex multimedia resources in heterogeneous environments. This paper describes the studies conducted, the experiments performed, and the conclusions reached towards that goal.

Full reference

Christian Timmerer, Maria Teresa Andrade, Pedro Carvalho, Davide Rogai, and Giovanni Cordara, "The Semantics of MPEG-21 Digital Items Revisited", Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2008 2nd International Workshop on the Many Faces of Multimedia Semantics, Vancouver, Canada, October 27 - November 1, 2008.

Workshop on New Challenges in Video Coding Standardization – Call for Contributions

Video compression has been a very active area of defining standards over the last 30 years. To face the challenges that emerging applications impose on the requirements of video coding standardization, ISO/IEC WG11 (MPEG) plans to organize a full-day workshop in Korea on 14 October 2008, during the 86^th WG11 meeting in Korea.

The key intention of the workshop is to acquire solid information about the context in which video coding will be operating in the future, which will enable MPEG to draw conclusions for the needs and chances in video coding standardization during the next years and to start drafting three key documents: technology context, applications and requirements for a new video coding standard. For this purpose it is planned to invite speakers on key topics and in addition select a variety of proposed contributions. The following topics will be considered:

1. Applications: Which video signal resolutions are expected, which data rates will be manageable, which networks/storage media will be dominant starting from the middle of the next decade for

   1. Unicast and broadcast video/movie distribution,

   2. Wireless and mobile,

   3. Packaged media.

2. Next-Generation Networks (around the year 2015)

   1. Which data rates and quality of service characteristics are expected for distribution over IP, WAN, IP-TV, wireless, mobile; unicast, multicast, broadcast, peer 2 peer, access and core networks?

   2. Existence of approaches for transmission, modulation, channel coding etc. that could break existing barriers for terrestrial, satellite and cable broadcast, mobile applications; are there limits in terms of efficient usage of bandwidth and cost?

3. Video equipment: Availability of cameras, displays, projectors etc. (both for professional and consumer sectors) around the year 2015

   1. Cameras: Resolution, color space, quality of lenses, noise characteristics for HD and beyond in particular, cost.

   2. Displays/projectors: Resolution, color space, size, resolution of typical input signals, cost.

   3. Human factors: What size/resolution is useful considering the properties of human visual system? How likely is it that people will put very large displays (beyond HD) into their houses?

4. Compression technology

   1. What are known limitations or missing functionality of current compression technology, considering new applications?

   2. New compression methods that could overcome such limitations.

   3. Methods to evaluate performance: Visual quality, complexity.

The workshop will be organized by a single track of oral presentations. When planning to propose a contribution, please send a summary by 5 September 2008, including title, author(s), area(s) as from the list above and an abstract of 500 words by email to the following persons (chairmen of MPEG video and requirements subgroups):

• Jens-Rainer Ohm, ohm(at)ient(dot)rwth-aachen(dot)de

• Jörn Ostermann, ostermann(at)tnt(dot)uni-hannover(dot)de

The final program, including exact times and site of the workshop, will be made available by 12 September 2008. Information about acceptance/rejection of the contributions will be conveyed to proponents prior to that date. Note that contributions that cannot be considered for presentation at the workshop will be reviewed during the following week at the MPEG meeting.

The vision for the MPEG eXtensible Middleware

In my previous blog entry I mentioned to write something about MXM (Multimedia eXtensible Middleware) but someone else did already. Read more about this here.

Furthermore, the MXM architecture & technologies and MXM API is online available also.