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 N5681

July 2003 – Trondheim, Norway

MPEG approves another MPEG-21 Technology

Trondheim, Norway, 29 July 2003. The vision of a multimedia framework took another giant leap forward with completion of Parts 5 and 6 of MPEG-21, the Rights Expression Language (REL) and its associated Rights Data Dictionary (RDD). The REL and the RDD, together form a powerful tool for managing the consumption rights of all forms of content. The REL can also be used independently, if desired.

 The REL provides industry with the means to create expressions that can then be associated with audio/video and other content to express what the consumer can do with that content. REL expressions can be as simple as “play” and can also express the complex consumption models that can be devised. Along with MPEG-21 Parts 2 and 3 (Digital Item Declaration and Digital Item Identification) that are already completed, the addition of the REL/RDD moves the MPEG‑21 Multimedia Framework one step closer to fruition. Progress was also made on other MPEG-21 technology this week.

 The Digital Item Adaptation work advanced to the penultimate stage in Trondheim. DIA, as it is known, is important for being making it possible to successfully render multimedia content on a myriad of multifunction devices by taking into account the network and terminal characteristics of the multimedia consumption infrastructure

Other MPEG news

MPEG Systems support for AVC

The technology to carry AVC (MPEG-4 Part 10) over MPEG-2 Transport Stream and MPEG-4 File Format was also upgraded. The ability to use AVC in conjunction with MPEG-2 in broadcast applications is in high demand by industry as is the ability to carry in AVC in the very popular MPEG-4 file format currently used for many applications, such as 3GPP, not just in MPEG.

MPEG-4 Visual

MPEG has completed an amendment to MPEG-4 Visual (Part2), which defines an 'Error-resilient Simple Scalable Profile'. This new technology provides increased quality in error-prone mobile environments. The addition of error resilience to the suite of tools in MPEG-4 Visual will facilitate re-synchronization enhancement information to be transmitted.

MPEG Reference Hardware

MPEG continues make every effort to make using its standards easier. At its 65^th meeting MPEG completed the work on the MPEG-4 reference hardware (Part 9). This completes a first important step in a two step process that will ultimately include the integration of both the optimized reference software (Part 7) and this now complete reference hardware part of MPEG‑4. The just completed Part 10 (AVC) is also slated to have its reference hardware and software implementations made available to all of industry as soon as they are completed. Contributions are being sought by MPEG for this purpose.

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Details of how to obtain MPEG’s Calls for Proposal’s (CfPs) and other public information is shown below.

 Call for Proposals on Lossless Coding of 1-bit Audio Signals

This WG11 CfP calls for technology appropriate for the lossless compression of 1-bit oversampled representations of audio. Responses are due at the 67^th MPEG meeting in December 2003. The success of Super Audio CD (SACD) has given rise to this need. One-bit audio is of value as an audio archiving format both for materials that are originated in a one-bit format and as a format to which analog recordings can be transferred.

Future MPEG meetings are as follows: 66^th meeting in Queensland, Australia from 20-24 October 2003, and the 67^th meeting Waikaloa, Hawaii from 8-12 December 2003 and the 68^th meeting in Munich, Germany from 19-23 March 2004.

For further information about MPEG, please contact:

Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, (Convenor of MPEG, Italy)

Via Borgionera, 103

10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy

Tel  +39 011 935 04 61

Email: mailto:leonardo@chiariglione.net

or

Peter Schirling (HoD of US MPEG Committee)
IBM Research – Digital Media Standards

River Road, MS 862H

Essex Junction, VT 05452, US
Tel +1 802 769 6123 Fax: +1 802 769 7362
Email: schirlin@us.ibm.com

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

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg

For the Outstanding Call for Proposals, see the Hot News section, http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/hot_news.htm

The MPEG homepage has links to other MPEG pages, which are maintained by some of the subgroups. It also contains links to public documents that are freely available for download to non-MPEG members.

Journalists that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases by email can contact Peter Schirling