INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
ISO/IEC/JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11
CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 N10316
February 2009 – Lausanne, CH
Source: |
Convener of MPEG |
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Status: |
Approved by WG11 |
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Subject: |
MPEG Press Release |
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Date: |
2009 February 6 |
Reconfigurable Video Coding Debuts as Latest Video Coding Standard
MPEG Celebrates another Emmy
Lausanne, CH – The 87th MPEG meeting was held in Lausanne, Switzerland from the 2nd to the 6th of February 2009.
Highlights of the 87th Meeting
Reconfigurable Video Coding Achieves FDIS Milestone
The Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) framework has reached a significant milestone at the 87th MPEG meeting. The two parts ISO/IEC 23001-4 (Codec Configuration Description) and 23002-4 (Video Tool Library) have reached the status of Final Draft International Standard (FDIS). In short, RVC provides the means to describe a generic video decoder and the corresponding bitstream syntax. It has already been shown that the description can be easily mapped onto various hardware and software platforms.
RVC could, for example, be used to update existing standard devices by new, downloadable functional units, or to support multiple standards with common building blocks. The current version of RVC already supports all functional units necessary to build MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile and AVC Baseline Profile devices, and the development of extensions to support other relevant MPEG standards is under way. Additionally the RVC framework is flexible enough to support decoders employing proprietary tools if toolboxes follow its basic design rules.
MPEG Celebrates Second Emmy Award for AVC
A “Technology and Engineering Emmy Award 2007-2008” has been awarded for the development of the MPEG-4 AVC standard to MPEG and the ITU-T's Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) by the U.S. National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). The award ceremony was held as part of the International CES trade show in Las Vegas on 7 January, 2009. This is the second Emmy awarded for the development of the AVC standard (ITU-T H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10), after the 2008 Primetime Emmy Engineering award that was given to the Joint Video Team (JVT) by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) for the development of the High Profile on 23 August, 2008. This case of a technology receiving both types of engineering Emmy awards, which seems to be an unprecedented event, is an indication of the excellent acceptance of the AVC standard in the market.
Extensible Middleware Emerges as New Standard
The MPEG eXtensible Middleware (MXM) technology specification has been developed into an ISO/IEC standard at the 87th MPEG meeting. The new project, ISO/IEC 23006, has reached the status of Committee Draft (CD), subdivided into three parts: MXM Architecture and Technologies, MXM APIs, and MXM Conformance and Reference Software. A related standard, the 2nd edition of ISO/IEC 29116-1 (MXM Protocols), has also achieved the status of CD.
MXM specifies the means to access individual MPEG tools through standardized APIs. It is expected that MXM will help the creation of a global market of MXM applications that can run on devices supporting also the MXM APIs in addition to the MPEG technologies. The MXM standard should also help the deployment of innovative business models because it will enable the easy design and implementation of media-handling value chains. The standard also provides reference software that MPEG plans to eventually release as open source with a business friendly license.
Interactive Music Application Format Tailors Music to Individual Tastes
At its 87th meeting, MPEG has developed a new application format standard that can provide its users with the new experience of interactive personalized music consumption. The Interactive Music Application Format (IMAF) standard has reached the status of Committee Draft (CD) at this meeting. IMAF will provide users with the ability to listen to music where the content of the music originates from a track, with, for example, vocal, keyboard and/or drums emphasized to that user’s particular taste. IMAF also enables users to publish the control information for their recomposed music content, enabling others with IMAF to experience their musical creations.
IMAF will provide a preset functionality and a hierarchy functionality as well as user controllability on each audio track. The preset refers to the multiple mixing information which is provided as well as audio track data. A hierarchy is a relationship organisation between the tracks or elements.
Initiative for Audio Reference Encoder Underway
At the 87th MPEG meeting the Audio Subgroup began an initiative to develop a high-quality, fully source code encoder for use in the Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC) standardization work. MPEG experts will work together to enhance existing software, and all MPEG members can use this code base for Core Experiments in the standardization process. The software is envisaged to accelerate the technical development and dissemination of the USAC specification.
At its 87th meeting, MPEG has completed its work on the second edition of the ISO/IEC 14496-22 "Open Font Format" specification which is a widely used, cross-platform standard for font data storage and interchange. The new standard, originally based on the widely supported OpenType specification, has undergone major improvements and extensions. Combined with the newly introduced features and functions for improved text rendering, the standard now provides broad support for all of the world's languages and writing systems at the highest levels of typographic quality and text layout complexity. The new technology includes support for advanced complex script processing and is fully compatible with most recent additions to the Unicode standard.
The new edition of the standard, along with the already existing award-winning technologies for advanced video, audio and graphics coding and multimedia scene encoding and representation, provides powerful addition to the MPEG suite of standards for multimedia devices and applications. For more information on the Open Font Format specification, please visit http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/technologies/mp04-off/index.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:
Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:
No. 88, Maui, Hawaii, USA, 20-24 April, 2009
No. 89, London, UK, 29 June – 03 July, 2009
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 +1 303 924 6984
Email: arianne@us.ibm.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.