MPEG news: a report from the 85th meeting in Busan, Korea

A lot of interesting things happened here and I'd like to report on three topics:

• MPEG RoSE
• Advanced IPTV Terminal
• High-performance Video Coding
  

MPEG RoSE: At this meeting we've issued the second version of the WD which will be publicly available and, thus, I can provide a more detailed overview here. I've also updated my slides from the last meeting which now can be found on SlideShare. The aim of RoSE to extend the traditional A/V content consumption to the dimension of sensory effects which are referred to as "an effect to augment perception by stimulating human senses in a particular scene of a multimedia application". With that definition in mind, sensory effects are composed by following the structure of the Sensory Effect Description Language (SEDL) and making use of terms (actually, effect types) of the Sensory Effect Vocabulary (SEV).

Sensory Effect Description Language (SEDL): Provides basic building blocks (declaration, effects, group of effects, reference to effects, parameters), common attributes (timing, priority, intensity, etc.), and data types (void at the moment) for constructing/authoring sensory effect metadata which is associated to A/V content.

Sensory Effect Vocabulary (SEV): Provides a clear set of extensible effect types which are currently comprising effects for color (illumination), temperature (°C), wind (Beaufort), and vibration (Richter).

It is foreseen that the sensory effect metadata which comes along with the A/V content is translated (or mapped or adapted) - by a module (hw/sw) called RoSE engine - to commands that are understood by so-called sensory devices with certain capabilities. Both commands and capabilities are also within the scope of standardization. Hence, it should be possible to consume the A/V content timely synchronized with its effects for an increased user experience. Furthermore, user preferences might also affect this translation/mapping/adaptation process.

Advanced IPTV Terminal: This activity is about to define a terminal suitable for IPTV scenarios jointly with ITU which may result in a similar construction as the JVT for video coding standardization. However, nothing has been fixed yet and interested parties are invited to join the discussions via the corresponding Ad-hoc Group (AhG) [subscribe]with the following mandates:

1. Look after the process of establishing the joint project with ITU-T so that SG16 may presented with a matured proposal for a new standard for Advanced IPTV Terminal
2. Gather use case scenarios and requirements for Advanced IPTV Terminal
3. Conduct collaboration with ITU-T Q.13/16 to prepare a joint meeting

High-performance Video Coding: I've already reported on that in previous blog posts, see part one and two for details.

Finally, MPEG got an Emmy! ;-)