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.

MPEG Press Release: Unified Speech and Audio Coding Achieves Major Milestone

--full press release available here.

Geneva, CH – The 93rd MPEG meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland from the 26th to the 30th of July 2010.

Highlights of the 93rd Meeting

• USAC progresses to Committee Draft
• MPEG-V collection of six new parts for information exchange with virtual worlds is completed
• AIT reaches first major standard’s development milestone
• MPEG launches standard for the carriage of multimedia data over HTTP
• New amendment enables efficient representation of 3D meshes with multiple attributes
• Calls for Proposals for MMT and Composite Font Standard issued

Details for each highlight can be found in the full press release.

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.

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.

IPTV and Video Networks in the 2015 Timeframe: The Evolution to medianets

Interesting article which also addresses "the way out of the middleware maze".

Interestingly, the article states that "although it is unlikely that all aspects of IPTV middleware, such as DRM or user control interfaces, will be standardized to the point that open application programming interfaces (APIs) will be available for all capabilities, the primary objective of specifying a standardized framework architecture for middleware is to enable definition of some of the open APIs to enhance interoperability and thereby reduce development costs."

Well, that's exactly what ISO/MPEG's Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) standard is about. See my blog or http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/ for further details!

in reference to:

"The rapid progress being made in technologies that enable video content delivery over IP networks to consumers has prompted predictions that the evolution of IP-based next-generation networks will be largely driven by video service delivery requirements. This article surveys trends in the underlying technologies, extrapolating out to the 2015 timeframe, and drawing on the developments in standardization for IPTV, cable networks, and the IP NGN. These evolution trends lead to the notion of a medianet as a useful way to think of all of the enabling video and multimedia technologies. A medianet is essentially an IP network that is optimized to deliver video services to any or multiple display devices, and uses any of optical, cable, wireline, and wireless networks for this purpose."
- IEEE Communications Magazine (auf Google Sidewiki anzeigen)

MPEG news: a report from the 90th meeting in Xi'an, China

The 90th MPEG meeting in Xi’an, China is coming up with some very interesting news which are briefly highlighted here. First and, I think, most importantly, the timeline for the new MPEG/ITU-T video coding format has been discussed and it seems the final Call for Proposals (CfP) will be ready in January 2010. A draft CfP is available now and hopefully will be also publicly available if they solve all the editing issues until early November. This means that the proposals will be evaluated in April 2010 (note: this will be a busy meeting as a couple of other calls need to be evaluated too; see later). The CfP defines five classes of test sequences with the following characteristics (number of sequences available in brackets):

• Class A with 2560x1600 cropped from 4Kx2K (2);
• Class B with 1920x1080p at 24/50-60 fps (5);
• Class C with 832x480 WVGA (4);
• Class D with 416x240 WQVGA (4); and
• Class E with 1280x720p at 50-60fps (3).

For classes B, C, and E subjective tests will be performed whereas classes A and D will be only evaluated objectively using PSNR. The reason for evaluating A and D using objective measurements is due to its insignificant subjective differences with B and C respectively. Finally, they’re still discussing about the actual common nickname name of the standard as it seems some are not happy with high-performance video coding but that’s yet another story…

Second, 3D video coding is still a major topic in MPEG but you probably need to wait yet another year until a Call for Proposals will be issued. That is, a 3DV standard will be probably available around the beginning of 2013 at the earliest. The major issue right now is the availability of content – as usual – and different device manufacturer standards with respect to 3D video.

The third major topic at this meeting was around AIT and MMT, two acronyms you shall become more familiar in the future. The former is referred to as Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) and aims to develop an ecosystem for media value chains and networks. Therefore, basic (atomic) services will be defined including protocols (payload formats) to enable users to call these services, Application Programming Interfaces to access services, and bindings to specific programming languages. Currently, 30 of these basic services are foreseen which can be clustered in services pertaining to the identification, authentication, description, storage, adaptation, posting, packaging, delivery, presentation, interaction, aggregation, management, search, negotiation, and transaction. The timeline is similar as for HVC which means that proposals will be evaluated in April 2010. The latter is referred to as MPEG Media Transport (MMT) and basically aims to become a successor of the well-known MPEG-2 Transport Stream. Currently, two topics are explored for which also requirements have been formulated. The first topic covers adaptive, progressive transport and the second topic is in the area of cross-layer design. Further topics where this activity might look into are hybrid delivery and conversational services. As for HVC and AIT, the proposals are going to be evaluated in April 2010. However, in order to further refine this possible new work item, MPEG will held a workshop in January 2010 on the Wednesday during the Kyoto meeting focusing on “adaptive progressive transport” and “cross-layer design”.

However, MPEG is looking forward to a very busy meeting in April 2010 which by the way will be held in Dresden, Germany.

Another issue that has been discussed in Xi’an was (again) the development of a royalty free codec within MPEG. While some might say that within MPEG, trying to establish a royalty free codec is a first step towards failure, others argue that MPEG-1 is already royalty free, for MPEG-2 most patents expire in 2011, the Internet community is requesting this (e.g., IETF established coded group and Google has chosen On2, a royalty free codec), and, finally, MPEG-4 Part 10 royalty free baseline basically failed. Thus, maybe (or hopefully) this is the right time for a royalty free codec within MPEG and who can predict the future? Anyway, there’s some activity going on in this area and if you’re interested, stay tuned…

Finally, I’d like to note that MPEG-V (Media Context & Control) and MPEG-U (Rich Media User Interface) are progressing smoothly and both going hand in hand towards its finalization. This meeting, the FCDs have been approved which forms a major milestone as this was the last chance for substantial new contributions. One such input was related to advanced user interaction like the Wiimote, etc. which will become part of MPEG-V but used also by MPEG-U. Hence, one might argue merging these two standards into one single standard called MPEG-W (i.e., U+V=W) and a wedding ceremony could be performed at the next meeting in Kyoto with Geishas as witnesses … why not? Please raise your voice now or be silent forever!