ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 N7759
January 2006 –
Source: |
Convenor of MPEG |
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Status: |
Approved
by WG11 |
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Subject: |
MPEG Press Release |
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Date: |
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MPEG-21 took another
significant step forward with the completion of Part 15 Event Reporting. This new part of
MPEG-21 is another important tool in suite of multimedia management technology.
Event Reporting provides mechanisms by which providers may request peers to
send reports on the usage of Digital Items. The standard provides a
specification for the report requests and the reports themselves. As for other MPEG-21 technologies, this infrastructure
is not required in all MPEG-21 applications but is a vital business enabler for
some content providers.
MPEG also completed Part 17
of MPEG-21 known as Fragment Identification of MPEG Resources. Fragment
Identifiers for MPEG Media Types provides, for the first time, a complete set
of location pointer mechanisms for the family of MPEG media. The Identifiers
allow users to locate fragments of video, both spatially and temporally as well
as identifying sections of their associated audio files. The standard also
provides location mechanisms for 'logical models' of, for example, DVDs and
CDs. The identifiers can be used across the Internet and not just within
MPEG-21 as they are conformant with the W3C fragment identifier mechanisms.
In other MPEG News
MPEG continues to lead an exploration activity on 3D audiovisual (3DAV) coding. Recent focus has been on compression efficiency of multiview video coding. Prospective applications include Free-Viewpoint Television (FTV) and presentation of video on new types of 3D displays. Based on testing conducted on responses to the recent call for proposal up to 50% reduction of bit rate is achievable if views of the same scene are compressed jointly instead of using a conventional simulcast coding approach using state-of-the-art technology, namely, MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC). Based on these results MPEG will standardize multiview video coding technology as an extension of AVC.
MPEG has also embarked on the standardization of the use of video coding technology for the encoding of depth/disparity map information to enable simple support of video encoding for stereo video displays. This will be Part 3 of the new "MPEG-C" (ISO/IEC 23002) video technology family.
The popular and pervasive AVC
standard, also reached another milestone in
MPEG completed to the work to
maintain the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) technology in the marketplace. The
existing DCT/IDCT accuracy requirements specifications have been replicated in
the new Part 1 of MPEG-C (ISO/IEC 23002).
MPEG began working on two new
areas of multimedia. The first is part of the Multimedia Applications Frameworks
knows as MAFs. The Protected Music MAF is an example
of how MPEG technologies can be used in specification of market ready devices.
Draft Call for Proposals on Reconfigurable
Video Coding
MPEG has issued a Draft Call for
Proposals on description languages and associated tools that enable decoder
description configurations to be composed of a subset of tools from a video
tools library. A Final Call for Proposals will be issued at the April meeting,
while the evaluation of the answers to this Call for Proposals is foreseen for
the July MPEG meeting.
As background information about
this effort, MPEG continues to believe that it is important to propose
innovations in the video coding field that are capable of satisfying the
changing landscape and needs of video coding applications. With this objective
in mind, MPEG intends to standardize a reconfigurable video coding framework
allowing a dynamic development, implementation and adoption of standardized
video coding solutions with features of higher flexibility and reusability. In
this context, the objective of the MPEG Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC)
framework is to allow the definition of new video coding solutions out of an
MPEG standard library of coding tools. Another objective of the MPEG RVC
framework is the possibility to include new coding tools in the MPEG standard
library.
Once again
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 begun to contribute a
series of brief white-papers that explain each of these individually. The
repository is growing week-by-week so if something you are interested is not
there yet it will be shortly but do not hesitate to request it as well. You can
start your MPEG adventure at: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/mpeg-tech.htm
Further
information
Future MPEG meetings are as
follows:
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For further information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, (Convenor of MPEG,
Via Borgionera, 103
10040 Villar Dora (TO), Italy
Tel +39 011 935 04 61
Email: mailto:leonardo@chiariglione.org
or
Peter Schirling
IBM Research – Digital Media Standards
River Road, MS 862H
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
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 the Calls.
The MPEG homepage also 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.