MPEG Media Transport

During its last meeting, MPEG issued a call for proposals on MPEG Media Transport (MMT). In particular, the following documents have been approved and will are publicly available here.

• Call for Proposals on MPEG Media Transport (MMT) [doc]
• Requirements on MPEG Media Transport (MMT) [doc]
• MPEG Media Transport (MMT) Context and Objective [doc]
• Use Cases for MPEG Media Transport (MMT) [doc]

All documents in a single ZIP file can be found here.

MPEG has developed various technologies for multimedia transport, such as MPEG-2 TS (Transport Stream) and MP4 file format. These technologies have been widely accepted and heavily used by various industries and applications, such as digital broadcasting, audio and video transport over the Internet, mobile phones, etc. At the same time, many standard developing organizations such as IETF, IEEE, and 3GPP have been providing various protocols to deliver multimedia contents packetized or packaged by such MPEG transport technologies.

During the recent years, broadcasting services and mobile services have started converging and it is expected that this convergence trend will continue with other services. Additionally, new emerging multimedia services and contents are being introduced. These developments in the multimedia arena mean that various content and services will be delivered over different networks and the user expects to consume these services using those networks, depending the availability and reach of the network at the time of consumption, as described in the MPEG Media Transport Use Cases. In order to deploy efficient solutions for the transport of MPEG media in an interoperable and universal fashion, especially given the recent increased demand in the heterogeneous network environment, the urgent need for an international multimedia transport standard that is widely adopted is sensed. This document represents a Call for Proposal on MPEG Media Transport (MMT) standardization.

For further information on background information of this Call for Proposal, please refer to the MMT Context and Objectives. The supporting use cases of MMT are presented in the MMT Use Cases, and requirements for MMT are documented in the MPEG Media Transport Requirements.

The main objectives of the new standard are:

• Efficient delivery of media in an adaptive fashion over various networks with the main emphasis on IP based networks, including terrestrial, satellite and cable broadcast networks. The standard will enable building interoperable solutions for delivery and consumption of media in this context.
• Enable the use of cross-layer designs to improve the Quality of Service/Experience (QoS/QoE). By incorporating QoS/QoE-related information from different layers, the delivery and consumption of media would be optimized.
• Enable building integrated services with multiple components for hybrid delivery over heterogeneous network environments. The specification shall provide the capability of seamless and efficient use of heterogeneous network environments, including broadcast, multicast, storage media and mobile networks.
• Enable bi-directional low delay services and applications, such as online gaming and conversational services.
• Enable efficient signaling, delivery and utilization of multiple content protection and rights management tools.
• Enable efficient content forwarding and relaying.
• Enable efficient one-to-many delivery.
• Provision means for error immunity, including burst errors.

Timeline:

• Call-for-Proposals issued: 2010/07 - DONE
• Proposals received and evaluation starts: 2011/01 - DONE

Preliminary MMT specification development plan:

• Committee Draft: 2011/07
• Draft International Standard: 2012/01
• Final Draft International Standard: 2012/10

For discussions related to this CfP, please subscribe to the MMT reflector.