MPEG advances Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) toward completion

Guangzhou, CN – The 94th MPEG meeting was held in Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China from the 11th to the 15th of October 2010.

--MPEG press release also available here.

Attendees of the 94th MPEG meeting, 53rd JPEG meeting, and 3rd JCT-VC Meeting of MPEG and VCEG, Guangzhou, China. Photo courtesy of the GZ National Engineering Laboratory for Video Technology Research & Industrialization Center.

Highlights of the 94th Meeting

MPEG issues the Committee Draft for the carriage of multimedia data over HTTP
As HTTP became one of the most important protocols for the delivery of content over the Internet, MPEG launched an effort to use this standard for the delivery of multimedia data in an optimal way. At its 94th meeting, MPEG’s Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has reached the Committee Draft stage. The DASH committee draft is based on the 3GPP Adaptive HTTP Streaming specification and improves it by adding several new features and extensions such as, support of live streaming of content, additional annotation capabilities, flexibility in combining multiple contents, enhancement of trick modes and random access, and support of multiple content management and protection schemes, delivery of MPEG-2 Transport Stream, Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and Multi-view Video Coding (MVC). The new standard is expected to achieve Final Draft International Standard status in July 2011.

MPEG-M for multimedia services also progresses to Committee Draft
MPEG has advanced its joint activity with ITU-T SG16 (Question 13) on Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) at its 94th meeting, and progressed its work item called Multimedia Service Platform Technologies, or MPEG-M, to Committee Draft (CD). MPEG-M facilitates service aggregation so that service providers can offer users a plethora of innovative services by extending current IPTV technology toward the seamless integration of personal content creation and distribution, shopping-commerce, social networks and Internet distribution of digital media. The new draft MPEG-M standard (ISO/IEC 23006) comprises Part 2, specifying a revised and improved Middleware of MPEG technologies (MXM), Part 4 specifying a set of elementary services, and Part 5 specifying some mechanisms for aggregating services and illustrating how to use these mechanisms to aggregate services, e.g. for Advanced IPTV Terminal. The new standard is expected to achieve Final Draft International Standard status in July 2011.

MPEG-V Awareness Event is planned for January, 2011
MPEG announces the organization of the "MPEG-V Awareness Event 2011", that will be held on 27 January, 2011 in Daegu, Korea. The purpose of this event is to present and demonstrate MPEG-V, a new standard elaborated by MPEG and expected to be published by ISO in2011. MPEG-V based products and applications will enable enhanced and persistent multi-sensorial user experience and interchange between virtual worlds. The standard is composed of several parts including:

• architecture and use case scenarios,
• syntax and semantics of data formats for interaction devices, device commands, and sensed information,
• metadata to describe device capabilities and user preferences,
• metadata to represent sensory effects,
• metadata to represent the characteristics of virtual objects and avatars.

The MPEG-V awareness day is particularly targeted to developers of products and applications for multi-sensorial user experience, content creators, broadcasters, multimedia device manufacturers, sensor & actuator manufacturers, virtual worlds and online game developers, as well as persons interested in new opportunities in digital media. The event is free of charge. Registration is available at the MPEG-V Web Site at http://wg11.sc29.org/mpeg-v.

MPEG enriches scalable complexity 3DMC for 3DG compression model
At its 94th meeting, MPEG enriched the 3D Graphics Compression Model published in MPEG-4 Part 25 with a new amendment to add a new tool. This tool allows application and product developers to apply, in an interoperable manner, the state-of-the-art scalable complexity 3D mesh coding from MPEG-4 Part 25 to scene representations defined in third-party standards such as COLLADA (by Khronos) and X3D (by W3C).

MPEG conducts Spatial Audio Object Coding verification test
MPEG Audio has finalized the work on MPEG Spatial Audio Object Coding (SAOC) by conducting a verification test comprised of a music-remix and a teleconferencing oriented scenario. The test results show that, when operated at the same bitrate, MPEG SAOC technology offers better quality than legacy technology for discretely encoded audio objects. This holds true for both the Low Power and regular decoding modes of SAOC. Alternatively, for a comparable level of audio quality, MPEG SAOC requires a significantly lower bitrate than other technologies, while at the same time providing a backwards compatible downmix and user interactivity.

MPEG SAOC enables interactive (“re-mixable”) music by adding only about 10% of additional bitrate to the rate required for a stereo downmix signal. For telephone conferencing solutions, MPEG SAOC efficiently transmits a single mono audio signal while the embedded SAOC data offers receiver side control for a personalized rendering of the remote conference participants across the local sound stage.

MPEG SAOC is the preferred solution for interactive / personalized audio products and services at bitrates as low as those known today from non-interactive audio codecs.

MPEG moves toward a visual search standard
At its 94th meeting, MPEG progressed the definition of requirements and the drafting of a Call for Proposals on Compact Descriptors for Visual Search. Exploiting the colocation of the 94th MPEG meeting with JPEG's 53rd meeting, MPEG experts in the domain of visual search met with experts from JPEG's JPSearch group to exchange their views and ideas on MPEG’s visual search activity. Experts from both working groups expressed their intent to strengthen their collaboration and to exploit the legacies of both committees.

Digging Deeper – How to Contact MPEG
Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. Experts, past and present, have contributed a series of white-papers and vision documents that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, so if something you are interested is not there yet, it may appear there shortly – but you should also not hesitate to request it. You can start your MPEG adventure at: http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/technologies.htm.


Further Information
Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

• No. 95, Daegu, KR, 24-28 January, 2011
• No. 96, Geneva, CH, 21-25 March, 2011
• No. 97, Torino, IT, 18-22 July, 2011
• No. 98, Geneva, CH 28 November – 2 December, 2011

For further information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convener of MPEG, Italy)
Via Borgionera, 103
10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel: +39 011 935 04 61
leonardo@chiariglione.org
This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:
http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/
The text and details related current Calls are in the Hot News section, http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to Calls.
The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by those who are not MPEG members. Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Arianne T. Hinds at arianne.hinds@infoprint.com.

Mobile Storytelling featuring Streaming Media based on the MPEG Extensible Middleware

--Joint bachelor thesis of RWTH Aachen and Klagenfurt University

Mobile Storytelling covers the creation, editing, and consumption of multimedia stories on mobile platforms. Mobile Stories are essential for knowledge sharing within (professional) communities. The mobile multimedia experience of users is critical for the appropriation of multimedia knowledge sharing. This application shall support the streaming / progressive download of media such as audio/video content to mobile platforms such as iPhone and Android including a possible transcoding on the server side. In particular, the MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) shall be implemented for these platforms supporting the above application in order to guarantee interoperability among the involved entities. A rudimental streaming library for these platforms is provided as a starting point but probably requires some extensions. Furthermore, the MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) is also not set in stone and can be extended if necessary which may lead to a submission to ISO/IEC MPEG co-authored by the bachelor candidate. We look forward to working with bachelor candidates who are interested in this kind of application, streaming media, middleware, and interoperability.

Details can be found here.

MPEG targets next generation teleconferencing and personalized audio in its newest technology

Kyoto, Japan – The 91st MPEG meeting was held in Kyoto, Japan from the 18th to the 22nd of January 2010.

Highlights of the 91st Meeting

• Advanced technology enables bitrate-efficient teleconferencing and personalized audio
• MPEG and ITU-T SG16 form Joint Collaborative Team (JCT) for High Performance Video Coding
• Creating solutions for Advanced IPTV Terminals
• MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) standard debuts to facilitate easy access to MPEG tools across a global market
• MPEG creates efficient and flexible standard for 3D graphics compression
• MPEG Media Transport (MMT) workshop targets requirements and technologies for streaming of MPEG content

Wanna know more/details? Please check out the official press release!

Overview of Selected Current MPEG Activities

--this covers a report from the 91st MPEG meeting in Kyoto, Japan

Previously, I've always provided a written report but this time it comes in form of a presentation (slideshow) - enjoy!

View more presentations from Klagenfurt University.

MPEG Global Conference points the way to Ultra HD online services

Source: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/meetings/london09/london_press.htm

London meeting sees significant improvement in compression for High Performance Video Coding

London, United Kingdom – The 89th MPEG meeting was held in London, United Kingdom from the 29th of June to the 3rd of July 2009.

Highlights of the 89th Meeting

Responses for Evidence Evaluated for HVC
During its 89th meeting, MPEG evaluated responses that were received on the Call for Evidence on High-Performance Video Coding (HVC), issued to obtain evidence of video coding technology providing compression capability clearly higher than that provided by the existing AVC standard (ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10). Significant gains in compression were found when an assessment was made based on information brought by the contributors. A subjective comparison was performed in a blind test with a set of video test sequences encoded by the AVC High Profile at matching rate points. Gains were demonstrated for test cases ranging from resolutions as low as 412x240 pixels (Wide QVGA) up to resolutions for ultra-high definition. MPEG has therefore concluded that the development of the next generation of video compression technology is to be started with the issuing of a formal Call for Proposals by the next meeting.

AVC Extended with New Profiles for Baseline and MVC Technologies

At the 89th meeting, the AVC standard (ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10) was further extended with the issuing of a Final Draft Amendment (FDAM) ballot containing the specification of two new profiles and new supplemental enhancement information. The first of the new profiles is the Constrained Baseline Profile, which forms the maximally-interoperable set of coding tools from the most widely deployed of existing profiles (the Baseline and High Profiles). The second new profile is a special case of multivew video coding (MVC) called the Stereo High Profile. The Stereo High profile enables all of the coding tools of the High Profile along with inter-view prediction capability for two-view (stereo) video applications such as 3D entertainment video.

Additionally, a new supplemental enhancement information (SEI) message has been defined for AVC. This new message – called the frame packing arrangement SEI message – enables the encoder to indicate to the decoder how to extract two distinct views of a video scene from a single decoded frame. The message also serves as a way to support stereo-view video in applications that require full compatibility with prior decoder designs that are not capable of supporting the new Stereo High Profile.

MPEG Promotes Technologies to link Real and Virtual Worlds

At its 88th meeting, MPEG had published a new call for proposals (N10526) with updated requirements (N10235) for an extension of the Media Context and Control project.

The technical contributions related to haptic and tactile devices, emotions, and virtual goods received at its 89th meeting have enabled MPEG to build a complete framework for defining haptic properties on top of virtual objects and to control haptic devices. This is now part of ISO/IEC 23005 or MPEG-V, a standard (formerly called Information Exchange with Virtual Worlds) providing a global framework and associated data representations to enable the interoperability between different virtual worlds (e.g. a digital content provider of a virtual world, a game with the exchange of real currency, or a simulator) and between virtual worlds and the real world (sensors, actuators, robotics, travel, real estate, or other physical systems).

MPEG Progresses Media Context and Control Project

MPEG has also advanced to the Committee Draft stage four parts of MPEG-V. The first part describes the architecture of the standard. The second part, “Control Information”, provides metadata representation of device capabilities and user preferences to be used for the information exchange between a controlling device and the real actuator or sensors. The third part, “Sensory Information”, provides metadata to represent sensory effects such as temperature, wind, vibration, fog, and more. The fourth part, “Avatar Characteristics”, provides metadata to commonly represent information about Avatars for the exchange of virtual characters between virtual worlds.

MPEG Hosts MXM Developer’s Day

The first MXM Developer’s Day workshop has been hosted by MPEG during its 89th meeting. The workshop featured demonstrations by companies and organisations that are developing MXM standards and applications. MXM, currently at its Final Committee Draft stage, provides specifications of APIs and an open source implementation (released under the BSD licence) to access various MPEG standards for easy deployment of applications. In this workshop detailed information about the APIs currently under standardization has been provided and several interesting demonstrations with the potential to create new business opportunities have also been presented. More information about this workshop can be found at http://mxm.wg11.sc29.org.

Rich Media User Interface Moves toward Completion

At its 89th meeting, MPEG has also advanced MPEG Rich Media UI (ISO/IEC 23007 or MPEG-U), to the Committee Draft stage. MPEG-U standardizes widget packaging, delivery, representation and communication formats. In its current draft, MPEG-U adopts and extends the W3C widget representation to provide a complete framework that can be used also in a non-Web based environment without a browser. Additionally, this standard enables communication among widgets on the same device or different devices, and other applications to better support connected environments.

Visual Signatures Enable New Applications

MPEG’s Visual Signatures define the world’s first standardized tools for content-based identification of any visual content even in very large databases, e.g. on the web. These tools enable a range of new applications including semantic linking, library management, metadata association (e.g. title, photographer, director, etc.) and content usage tracking. In the same way that a fingerprint or signature identifies a person, a Visual Signature is a compact descriptor uniquely representing either an image or video. The descriptor is derived directly from analysis of the visual content and is robust to heavy compression and editing.

The Image Signature and Video Signature are two separate amendments to MPEG-7. Collectively the two amendments are referred to as the MPEG-7 Visual Signatures. At the London meeting, the Video Signature advanced to the Proposed Draft Amendment (PDAM) stage with a target completion date of July 2010. The Image Signature was published as an ISO/IEC standard in April 2009.

Mobile Services to Be Enhanced by New BIFS Profile
At this meeting, MPEG advanced the new BInary Format for Scenes (BIFS) profile to the Committee Draft stage by incorporating additional nodes and technologies submitted as responses to the Call for Proposals for new BIFS technologies. The requirements for this profile (provided in N10567) originated from organizations of various industries and SDOs for digital radio and mobile television broadcasting. This profile will enable the development of more efficient and enhanced interactive services for mobile broadcasting services including digital radio or mobile television on small handheld devices. Moreover, it is backward compatible with Core2D@Level1 which is widely adopted by the industry.

Contact MPEG

Digging Deeper Once Again
Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. The experts past and present have contributed a series of white-papers that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, so if something you are interested is not there yet, it may appear there shortly – but you should also not hesitate to request it. You can start your MPEG adventure at: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/mpeg-tech.htm

Ends

Further Information
Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:
No. 90, Xian, CN, 26-30 October, 2009
No. 91, Kyoto, JP, 18-22 January, 2010
For further information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione (Convener of MPEG, Italy)
Via Borgionera, 103
10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel: +39 011 935 04 61
Email: mailto:leonardo@chiariglione.org
or
Dr. Arianne T. Hinds
Ricoh | IBM InfoPrint Solutions Company
6300 Diagonal Highway, MS 04N
Boulder, CO 80301, USA
Tel +1 720 663 3565
Email: arianne.hinds@infoprint.com

This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg
The text and details related to the Calls mentioned above (together with other current Calls) are in the Hot News section, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to the Calls.
The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by those who are not MPEG members. Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Arianne T. Hinds using the contact information provided above.

W3C Launches Device APIs and Policy Working Group

W3C launched a new Device APIs and Policy Working Group, co-Chaired by Robin Berjon (Vodafone) and Frederick Hirsch (Nokia). The group's mission is to create client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices services such as Calendar, Contacts, and Camera. Additionally, the group will produce a framework for the expression of security policies that govern access to security-critical APIs (such as the APIs listed previously). Per its charter, this group will conduct its work in public. Learn more about the Device APIs and Policy Working Group.

Hmm, they could be interested in the MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) which also specifies API that might be exploited by the W3C Device API.

MPEG news: a report from the 89th meeting in London, UK

A lot of interesting things happened at this meeting, notably the MXM Developer's Day, the Modern Media Transport workshop, MPEG-V and MPEG-U have been promoted to committee draft, and for MPEG High-performance Video Coding (HVC) enough evidence has been provided in order to start working towards a Call for Proposals (CfP).

The MXM Developer's Day was a great success with 45+ participants and all presentations are publicly available. Leonardo presented the MXM Vision while Filippo and Marius concentrated on the MXM Architecture and API respectively. This introductory session was followed by practical examples and demonstrations:

• Fully Interoperable Streaming of Media Resources in Heterogeneous Environments
• Including MPEG-4 3D graphics in your application
• An MXM-based application for sharing protected content

The workshop on Modern Media Transport (MMT) had even more participants (80+) and was clustered into two session. Session one was focusing on industry practice and presentations where given on how MPEG-2 TS and MP4 is being used. Furthermore, the DVB activity in the area of IPTV and InternetTV was presented. All the presentations will be publicly available through the MPEG Web site. The conclusion was that although MPEG-2 TS / MP4 is heavily used, it has some drawbacks due to their popularity. That is, MPEG-2 TS is running out of code points which is an issue. On the other hand, if MPEG is going to standardize something new, it has been recognized that it has to be to substantially better than what exists on the market with a high demand of backwards-compatibility to MPEG-2 TS. The issue will be further studied and stay tuned!

MPEG-V also known as Media Context and Control has promoted four parts to committee draft. The four parts are as follows:

• Part 1: Architecture
• Part 2: Control Information
• Part 3: Sensory Information
• Part 4: Avatar Characteristics

I've provided an overview during the final plenary and the presentation is accessible here.

MPEG-U is about Widgets and has been promoted to committee draft also. It seems to be an interesting activity which has a relationship to W3C's Widget activity. It will be interesting to see how these two standards co-exist.

Finally, the call for evidence for High-performance Video Coding (HVC) provided the following result: "Yes, we have enough evidence about improved compression technology (compared to AVC HP)". Thus, MPEG started working towards a call for proposals and a time schedule has been created. Furthermore, the future collaboration between MPEG and VCEG has been discussed.

That's it for now but I'll provide more details on the individual topics later. Please stay tuned!

MPEG Press Release: MPEG Explores New Technologies for High Performance Video Coding (HVC)

Maui, Hawaii, USA – The 88^th MPEG meeting was held in Maui, Hawaii, USA from the 20^th to the 24^th of April 2009.

Highlights of the 88^th Meeting

Call for Evidence of Technologies Issued for HVC

Technology evolution will soon make possible the capture and display of video material with a quantum leap in quality when compared to the quality of HDTV. However, networks are already finding it difficult to carry HDTV content to end users at data rates that are economical. Therefore, a further increase of data rates, such as soon will be possible, will put additional pressure on the networks. For example:

· High-definition (HD) displays and cameras are affordable for consumer usage today, while the currently available internet and broadcast network capacity is not sufficient to transfer large amount of HD content economically. While this situation may change slowly over time, the next generation of ultra-HD (UHD) contents and devices, such as 4Kx2K displays for home cinema applications and digital cameras, are already appearing on the horizon.

· For mobile terminals, lightweight HD resolutions such as 720p or beyond will be introduced to provide perceptual quality similar to that of home applications. Lack of sufficient data rates as well as the prices to be paid for transmission will remain a problem for the long term.

MPEG has concluded that video bitrate (when current compression technology is used) will go up faster than the network infrastructure will be able to carry economically, both for wireless and wired networks. Therefore a new generation of video compression technology with sufficiently higher compression capability than the existing AVC standard in its best configuration (the High Profile), is needed. Such High-Performance Video Coding (HVC) would be intended mainly for high quality applications, by providing performance improvements in terms of coding efficiency at higher resolutions, with applicability for entertainment-quality services such as HD mobile, home cinema and Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV.

To start a more rigorous assessment about the feasibility of HVC, a Call for Evidence has been issued, with the expectation that responses would report about the existence of technologies that would be able to fulfill the aforementioned goals. A set of appropriate test materials and rate points that would match the requirements of HVC application scenarios has been defined. Responses to this call will be evaluated at the 89^th MPEG meeting in July 2009. Depending on the outcome of this Call for Evidence, MPEG may issue a Draft Call for Proposals by the end of its 89^th meeting. The Call for Evidence can be found as document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10553 at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm

MPEG Seeks Technologies to link Real and Virtual Worlds

At its 88^th meeting, MPEG has published updated requirements (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10235) and issued an extended call for proposals (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10526) for an extension of the Media Context and Control project (ISO/IEC 23005 or MPEG-V) to standardize intermediate formats and protocols for the exchange of information between the (real) physical and virtual worlds. In particular, this extended call for proposals seeks technologies related to haptics and tactile, emotions, and virtual goods. Specifically, the goal of this project (formally called Information Exchange with Virtual Worlds) is to provide a standardized global framework and associated data representations to enable the interoperability between different virtual worlds (e.g. a digital content provider of a virtual world, a game with the exchange of real currency, or a simulator) and between virtual worlds and the real world (sensors, actuators, robotics, travel, real estate, or other physical systems). MPEG invites all parties with relevant technologies to submit these technologies for consideration. For more information, refer to the above documents, which are available at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm.

Digital Radio Service to be Extended with new BIFS

At its 88^th meeting, MPEG has been informed by the digital radio industry of the increasing need for a new interactive BInary Format for Scenes (BIFS) service for digital radio. This new service will enable the presentation of supplemental information like EPG or advertisements on radios with displays capable of supporting this service. In addition, such displays may be used for controlling the radio.

In order to fulfill the additional requirements for this new service, MPEG has issued a Call for Proposals for new BIFS technologies in N10568. The result of this call will be used to define a new amendment for BIFS and a profile, including the new technologies, backward compatible with Core2D@level1.

The requirements for Interactive Services for Digital Radio can be found in document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N10567 available at http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm.

New Presentation Element Added to Multimedia Framework

The MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework already provides flexible and efficient ways to package multimedia resources and associated metadata in a structured manner. At its 88^th meeting, MPEG advanced to the formal approval stage a new amendment to MPEG-21 (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 21000-2 PDAM 1 Presentation of Digital Item) to define a new element that can be used to provide information relevant to the presentation of multimedia resources. Specifically, the new element, called Presentation, will describe multimedia resources in terms of their spatio-temporal relationships and their interactions with users. In a related effort, MPEG also began the formal approval process for another amendment to MPEG-21 (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 21000-4 PDAM 2 Protection of Presentation Element) so that the new Presentation element can be associated with the Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) element for content protection and management.

Other Notable MPEG Events

MPEG Plans First MXM Developer’s Day

The first International MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) Developer’s Day will be held on 30 June at the Queen Mary University, London, U.K. The purpose of this event is to share with the software developer’s community the state of the art and the prospects of MPEG Extensible Middleware, a standard designed to promote the extended use of digital media content through increased interoperability and accelerated development of components, solutions, and applications. The event is free of charge. For more information, or to register, visit http://mxm.wg11.sc29.org.

MMT Workshop Targets Requirements for Streaming of MPEG Content

The Workshop for MPEG Media Transport (MMT) will be held on 1 July during the 89^th MPEG meeting at the Queen Mary University in London, U.K. The purpose of this event is to gather new requirements, use cases, and contributions related to the transport of multimedia content over heterogeneous networks. In particular, MPEG is gathering information on current limitations of available standards in the area of media streaming and associated challenges in emerging network environments. The MMT workshop is also free of charge. For more information, visit http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm

Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. The experts past and present have contributed a series of white-papers that explain each of these standards individually. The repository is growing with each meeting, so if something you are interested is not there yet, it may appear there shortly – but you should also not hesitate to request it. You can start your MPEG adventure at: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/mpeg-tech.htm

Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

mailto:leonardo(at)chiariglione(dot)org

or

This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg

The text and details related to the Calls mentioned above (together with other current Calls) are in the Hot News section, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to the Calls.

The MPEG homepage also has links to other MPEG pages which are maintained by the MPEG subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download by those who are not MPEG members. Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email should contact Dr. Arianne T. Hinds using the contact information provided above.

MPEG news: a report from the 88th meeting in Ka'anapali, HI, USA

MPEG-V has been renamed to Media Context & Control, a workshop on Modern Media Transport (MMT) will be held at the next meeting in London as well as an MXM Developer's Day, for High-Performance Video Coding (HVC) a Call for Evidence has been issues, and MPEG is about to start a new work item in the area of Rich Media User Interface. These are my headlines from the MPEG meeting last week at the beautiful Ka'anapali Beach.

MPEG-V, formerly known as Information Exchange with Virtual Worlds has been finally renamed to Media Context and Control. I think this is generic enough to cover everything in there now and what will come in the future. If you think this is too broad, then remember the name of MPEG-21 is just Multimedia Framework. Btw. an extended call for proposals has been issues for technolgies related to haptics & tactile, emotions, and virtual goods. For the rest, we have new working drafts for architecture, control information, sensory information, avatar information, reference software, and conformance.

At its next meeting, MPEG will host two sort of workshops which are also open to the public. The first one is related to the MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) and the second related to Modern Media Transport. I'm a co-organizer of the former but you'll also find me at the latter.

The Call for Evidence on High-Performance Video Coding has been issued with the following timeline

• Test sequences and AVC High Profile anchors available: 2009-04-30
• Expression of interest to participate: 2009-06-01
• Submission of contributions (descriptive document): 2009-06-22
• Decoded sequences, bitstreams and binary decoders available at London by 2009-06-27
• Evaluation of responses: July 2009 MPEG meeting (shall be attended by submitters)
• Depending on the outcome of the Call for Evidence, MPEG intents to issue a Draft Call for Proposals by the end of the July meeting

Finally, a first working draft for the MPEG Rich Media User Interface has been issued and a nice demo has been presented at the meeting in the area of widgets. More to come on this soon. However, in my view there's a strong relationship with W3C's Rich Web Client Activity which will be studied during the course of developing this standard.

If you ask yourself why I hardly ever post something about audio, the reason is very simply, I'm a video and systems guy but if you'd like me to dig into audio stuff, please let me know!

CfP: MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) Developer's Day

1st International MPEG Extensible Middleware Developer's Day (MXMDevDay) 2009
30 June, 2009, Queen Mary University London, UK

Details will appear soon at the MXM Web site under http://mxm.wg11.sc29.org/.

The purpose of this event is to share with the software developers community the state of the art and the prospects of the MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM), a standard designed to promote the extended use of digital media content through increased interoperability and accelerated development of components, solutions and applications.

The MXM standard will promote the creation of a global market of applications, devices, and MXM components. As a result, we expect that innovative business models will be easily deployed.

The MXM developers day is particularly targeted to people:
— doing research and development of digital media architectures
— developing digital media applications and services
— developing digital media middleware
— interested in new opportunities in digital media
— developing and distributing open source software

Date & Venue
Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 9:00 – 13:00
Room 328, Francis Bancroft Building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS

Programme
Session 1 (09:00-09:45): Opening, Chair: Panos Kudumakis
The MXM Vision, Leonardo Chiariglione

Session 2 (09:45-11:15): MXM Overview, Chair: Christian Timmerer
MXM Architecture, Filippo Chiariglione
MXM API, Marius Preda

Coffee Break (11:15-11:45)

Session 3 (11:45-13:00): Software Development
MXM Reference Software
Selected MXM Applications

Registration
The event is free of charge but possible attendees shall register to this event via the MXM Web Site at http://mxm.wg11.sc29.org/.

Chairs

• Filippo Chiariglione
  CEDEO.net, Italy, filippo(at)cedeo(dot)net
• Panos Kudumakis
  Queen Mary University, London, UK, panos(dot)kudumakis(at)elec(dot)qmul(dot)ac(dot)uk
• Marius Preda
  Institut TELECOM, France, Marius(dot)Preda(at)it-sudparis(dot)eu
• Christian Timmerer
  Klagenfurt University, Austria, christian(dot)timmerer(at)itec(dot)uni-klu(dot)ac(dot)at

Announcement for a Joint Meeting on IPTV between MPEG and ITU-T Q.13/16

Announcement for a Joint Meeting on IPTV between MPEG and ITU-T Q.13/16 Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12, in Busan, Korea, collocated with the 86th MPEG meeting.

The purpose of this joint meeting, as stated in the liaison letter to ITU-T Q.13/16, w10090, at the last MPEG meeting, is to understand the ITU-T IPTV requirements and services scenarios, and to ensure that the three recommended MPEG technologies (BiFS, LASeR, and MXM) and any other MPEG technologies (such as those related to metadata, digital items and licenses) can, or can be profiled to, meet the ITU-T IPTV requirements and implement ITU-T IPTV service scenarios.

Schedule:
Saturday October 11, 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm
Sunday October 12, 10am-1am

Location:
Same location as MPEG meets. Check with the registration desk for the meeting room information.

Note that Q.13/16 will have their own meeting on Friday October 10 and possibly Sunday October 12.

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.

MPEG news: a report from the 85th meeting in Hannover, Germany

The 85th MPEG meeting was held in Hannover, Germany and a few topics discussed at this meeting I'd like to briefly review here.

Representation of Sensory Effects

A working draft of the MPEG Representation of Sensory Effects (RoSE) has been issued and I've given an overview at the Friday plenary. Interested readers might also have a look at the overview paper issued at the last meeting.

Multimedia Extensible Middleware

The Multimedia Extensible Middleware (MXM) also reached the working draft status after a very comprehensive contribution of more than 10 institutions has been submitted as a response to the CfP. It will provide an API for accessing various assets along the multimedia service delivery chain. I guess I'll provide a story soon about that...

Rich media user interface framework

media user interface framework is MPEG's approach getting closer to the actual user. At the moment four areas of interest have been defined: (1) a widget authoring format, (2) widget representation format, (3) widget/container interface, (4) widget/container server protocol. A context and objective document has been issued at this meeting and will appear soon on the MPEG Web site's exploration section.

MPEG-V

There has been quite some activity on MPEG-V, also related to RoSE. In fact, the system architecture of MPEG-V has been revised so that it maps onto the RoSE architecture. That is, now the RoSE architecture can be seen as a possible instantiation of the MPEG-V system architecture. Having said this, I think 'alea iacta est', RoSE will become part of MPEG-V. Of course, this is my personal opinion and please do not quote me on that ;-) Below you can find the architecture of MPEG-V and details will appear soon on the MPEG Web site's exploration section also.

Next Generation Video Coding

Industry is demanding for resolution, resolution, resolution beyond HD sometimes also known as Ultra High Defintion Video. Therefore, at the next meeting in Busan there will be a workshop prior (or after) the meeting where new ideas can be presented. However, for some reason it seems that we will already see a solution for that at this year's IBC which is based - now sit down - on MPEG-2.

Finally, this is the place where we had our social event - it was really very nice & thanks to the organizers of this meeting. Enjoy your holidays, you have deserved it.