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 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!

Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events

The Web Applications Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events. This specification defines a set of APIs and events for the Widgets 1.0 Family of Specifications that enable baseline functionality for widgets. The APIs and Events defined by this specification defines, amongst other things, the means to:

• access the metadata declared in a widget's configuration document,
• receive events related to changes in the view state of a widget,
• determine the locale under which a widget is currently running,
• be notified of events relating to the widget being updated,
• invoke a widget to open a URL on the system's default browser,
• requests the user's attention in a device independent manner,
• and check if any additional APIs requested via the configuration document's feature element have successfully loaded.

Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

This is somewhat related to MPEG's Rich Media User Interface Framework for which the Call for Proposals is open until April. Requirements for the this Rich Media UI Framework can be found here and some further information about this interesting exploration activity can be found here.

Rich Media UI Framework

According to N9895, the MPEG User Interface (UI) Framework is a framework with the following properties:

• The use of a description language capable of designing Rich User Interfaces (including graphics, audio, video, animations, etc.);
• The possibility to personalize user interfaces based on user information and across devices;
• The possibility to exchange UI between devices;
• The possibility to aggregate UI from several devices.
  

The scope of the MPEG UI framework can be clustered into a widget representation and widget package formats as depicted in the figure above. Thus, the requirements (N10231) can are organized in a similar way.

The Widget Packaging Formats

• shall provide means to identify a widget representation and its associated resources
• shall provide means to point to an optional simplified representation
  
• shall provide means to carry widgets, associated resources and simplified representations using existing delivery mechanisms (such as MPEG-2 TS, MP4, RTP)
• shall allow delivery of the widget and its associated resources independent of each other
• shall allow delivery of the widget and its simplified representation independent of each other
• shall support definition of metadata associated to any widget

The Widget Representation Formats

• shall allow for a declarative description (binary or not) of rich media widgets
• shall support external communications (input and output)
  
• shall allow push and pull data delivery model between External Communication Entities and Widgets
  
• shall provide a way to access one or more external communication entities
  
• shall support dynamic access to external communication entities
• shall be delivery protocol independent
• shall allow for relationships between a widget and its simplified representation
  
• shall allow for identification of Widget characteristics
• shall allow for identification of dynamic and/or adaptable Widget characteristics
  
• shall provide the ability for Widgets to store and retrieve user data
• shall provide the ability for Widgets to query the environment (i.e. user, terminal and network characteristics) and to be notified of changes in this environment
• shall define a set of Widget states defined in a Widget Life Cycle, with methods for communicating changes of state, and with associated required behaviour for the Widget
• shall allow for specification of security constraints in storage of user data and communications with external entities
  

Call for Proposals
The call for proposals (N10232) provides all relevant information in case you'd like to submit a proposal that fits the above requirements. The deadline of the calls, deadlines and evaluation of answers are as follows:

• Final call for proposals: 2008/10/17
• Submission Deadline: 2009/04/15 (23:59h GMT)
• Evaluation of answers: 2009/04/18 – 2009/04/24 (during the 88th MPEG meeting (http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/meetings.htm) and the week end before: proponents are strongly advised to present their proposals in person).
  

Preliminary development plan for the MPEG UI framework:

• Working Draft: April, 2009
• Committee Draft: July, 2009
• Final Committee Draft: October, 2009
• Final Draft International Standard: April, 2010
  

Interested parties are kindly asked to respond. The submissions both by MPEG and non MPEG members shall be received by the 15th of April, 2009 23.59 hours GMT, by Joern Osterman, chair of the MPEG Requirements Group, (ostermann_AT_tnt_DOT_uni-hannover_DOT_de).

Further details about the submission procedure can be found in N10232. I'll post the links to the requirements document and CfP as soon as it becomes available on the MPEG Web site.