INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11
CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N11958
March 2011, Geneva, Switzerland

Source

Systems

Status

Approved

Title

One-pager on BIFS ExtendedCore2D profile

Author

Cyril Concolato (Telecom ParisTech)

ISO/IEC 14496-11:2005/Amd.7:2010 is an amendment to the MPEG-4 BIFS standard which defines a new profile, called ExtendedCore2D. This amendment is intended to improve services such as T-DMB mobile television as deployed in South Korea or Digital Radio services as shown in Figure 1. The goal of this profile is to enable richer services with reduced bandwidth requirements. It is based on the existing Core2D profile, extends it with existing tools from the MPEG-4 BIFS standard not yet included in the Core2D profile, and with newly defined tools.

Figure 1 - Example of BIFS Digital Radio Service – Usage of vector graphics
(courtesy of VizionR and Fun Radio)

New and richer services defined with the ExtendedCore2D profile also need more compact and more efficient tools for scene graph management including layout description. For better scene management, the new profile includes the PROTO tool, to help reduce scene complexity and improve the coding efficiency. In term of layout, the new profile adds the ability to position objects, including text and vector graphics, in paragraphs with the Layout node. It also adds the possibility to transform, reuse, view and animate parts of the layout efficiently to achieve compact and appealing animations with the TransformMatrix2D, CompositeTexture2D and Viewport nodes.

The BIFS amendment also defines several new tools to enrich services. Some of them target a reduction of the bandwidth required by BIFS services. In particular, the CacheTexture node enables the carriage of compressed images within the BIFS stream, removing the use and signaling of some elementary streams dedicated for raster image delivery. The bandwidth gain can be important when the service contains many images, as shown in Figure 3. Some new tools provide new features for service authors. The EnvironmentTest node enables the design of services that adapt to viewing conditions, e.g. to the screen size, to the presence of keypad or to the viewing in cars. The KeyNavigator node facilitates the design of the navigation within rich scenes. With the Storage node, services can be designed to be persistent across activations and deactivations, offering the user a restoration of its settings. Finally, in T-DMB environments, it may be interesting to reuse, within the BIFS service, data carried outside the BIFS streams, such as Electronic Program Guides. For this purpose, a new type of BIFS update, called ReplaceToExternalData, is defined.

Figure 2 - Example of BIFS Digital Radio Service – News and non-synchronized screen with multiple images (courtesy of VizionR)

New and richer services defined with the ExtendedCore2D profile also need more compact and more efficient tools for scene graph management including layout description. For better scene management, the new profile includes the PROTO tool, to help reduce scene complexity and improve the coding efficiency. In term of layout, the new profile adds the ability to position objects, including text and vector graphics, in paragraphs with the Layout node. It also adds the possibility to transform, reuse, view and animate parts of the layout efficiently to achieve compact and appealing animations with the TransformMatrix2D, CompositeTexture2D and Viewport nodes.

The BIFS amendment also defines several new tools to enrich services. Some of them target a reduction of the bandwidth required by BIFS services. In particular, the CacheTexture node enables the carriage of compressed images within the BIFS stream, removing the use and signaling of some elementary streams dedicated for raster image delivery. The bandwidth gain can be important when the service contains many images, as shown in  REF _Ref287611529 \h Figure 3. Some new tools provide new features for service authors. The EnvironmentTest node enables the design of services that adapt to viewing conditions, e.g. to the screen size, to the presence of keypad or to the viewing in cars. The KeyNavigator node facilitates the design of the navigation within rich scenes. With the Storage node, services can be designed to be persistent across activations and deactivations, offering the user a restoration of its settings. Finally, in T-DMB environments, it may be interesting to reuse, within the BIFS service, data carried outside the BIFS streams, such as Electronic Program Guides. For this purpose, a new type of BIFS update, called ReplaceToExternalData, is defined.

Figure  3 - Example of BIFS Digital Radio Service – News and non-synchronized screen with multiple images (courtesy of VizionR)