Thursday, November 11, 2010

MPEG advances Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) toward completion

Guangzhou, CN – The 94th MPEG meeting was held in Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China from the 11th to the 15th of October 2010.
--MPEG press release also available here.
Attendees of the 94th MPEG meeting, 53rd JPEG meeting, and 3rd JCT-VC Meeting of MPEG and VCEG, Guangzhou, China. Photo courtesy of the GZ National Engineering Laboratory for Video Technology Research & Industrialization Center.
Highlights of the 94th Meeting

MPEG issues the Committee Draft for the carriage of multimedia data over HTTP
As HTTP became one of the most important protocols for the delivery of content over the Internet, MPEG launched an effort to use this standard for the delivery of multimedia data in an optimal way. At its 94th meeting, MPEG’s Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) has reached the Committee Draft stage. The DASH committee draft is based on the 3GPP Adaptive HTTP Streaming specification and improves it by adding several new features and extensions such as, support of live streaming of content, additional annotation capabilities, flexibility in combining multiple contents, enhancement of trick modes and random access, and support of multiple content management and protection schemes, delivery of MPEG-2 Transport Stream, Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and Multi-view Video Coding (MVC). The new standard is expected to achieve Final Draft International Standard status in July 2011.

MPEG-M for multimedia services also progresses to Committee Draft
MPEG has advanced its joint activity with ITU-T SG16 (Question 13) on Advanced IPTV Terminal (AIT) at its 94th meeting, and progressed its work item called Multimedia Service Platform Technologies, or MPEG-M, to Committee Draft (CD). MPEG-M facilitates service aggregation so that service providers can offer users a plethora of innovative services by extending current IPTV technology toward the seamless integration of personal content creation and distribution, shopping-commerce, social networks and Internet distribution of digital media. The new draft MPEG-M standard (ISO/IEC 23006) comprises Part 2, specifying a revised and improved Middleware of MPEG technologies (MXM), Part 4 specifying a set of elementary services, and Part 5 specifying some mechanisms for aggregating services and illustrating how to use these mechanisms to aggregate services, e.g. for Advanced IPTV Terminal. The new standard is expected to achieve Final Draft International Standard status in July 2011.

MPEG-V Awareness Event is planned for January, 2011
MPEG announces the organization of the "MPEG-V Awareness Event 2011", that will be held on 27 January, 2011 in Daegu, Korea. The purpose of this event is to present and demonstrate MPEG-V, a new standard elaborated by MPEG and expected to be published by ISO in2011. MPEG-V based products and applications will enable enhanced and persistent multi-sensorial user experience and interchange between virtual worlds. The standard is composed of several parts including:

  • architecture and use case scenarios,
  • syntax and semantics of data formats for interaction devices, device commands, and sensed information,
  • metadata to describe device capabilities and user preferences,
  • metadata to represent sensory effects,
  • metadata to represent the characteristics of virtual objects and avatars.

The MPEG-V awareness day is particularly targeted to developers of products and applications for multi-sensorial user experience, content creators, broadcasters, multimedia device manufacturers, sensor & actuator manufacturers, virtual worlds and online game developers, as well as persons interested in new opportunities in digital media. The event is free of charge. Registration is available at the MPEG-V Web Site at http://wg11.sc29.org/mpeg-v.

MPEG enriches scalable complexity 3DMC for 3DG compression model
At its 94th meeting, MPEG enriched the 3D Graphics Compression Model published in MPEG-4 Part 25 with a new amendment to add a new tool. This tool allows application and product developers to apply, in an interoperable manner, the state-of-the-art scalable complexity 3D mesh coding from MPEG-4 Part 25 to scene representations defined in third-party standards such as COLLADA (by Khronos) and X3D (by W3C).

MPEG conducts Spatial Audio Object Coding verification test
MPEG Audio has finalized the work on MPEG Spatial Audio Object Coding (SAOC) by conducting a verification test comprised of a music-remix and a teleconferencing oriented scenario. The test results show that, when operated at the same bitrate, MPEG SAOC technology offers better quality than legacy technology for discretely encoded audio objects. This holds true for both the Low Power and regular decoding modes of SAOC. Alternatively, for a comparable level of audio quality, MPEG SAOC requires a significantly lower bitrate than other technologies, while at the same time providing a backwards compatible downmix and user interactivity.

MPEG SAOC enables interactive (“re-mixable”) music by adding only about 10% of additional bitrate to the rate required for a stereo downmix signal. For telephone conferencing solutions, MPEG SAOC efficiently transmits a single mono audio signal while the embedded SAOC data offers receiver side control for a personalized rendering of the remote conference participants across the local sound stage.

MPEG SAOC is the preferred solution for interactive / personalized audio products and services at bitrates as low as those known today from non-interactive audio codecs.

MPEG moves toward a visual search standard
At its 94th meeting, MPEG progressed the definition of requirements and the drafting of a Call for Proposals on Compact Descriptors for Visual Search. Exploiting the colocation of the 94th MPEG meeting with JPEG's 53rd meeting, MPEG experts in the domain of visual search met with experts from JPEG's JPSearch group to exchange their views and ideas on MPEG’s visual search activity. Experts from both working groups expressed their intent to strengthen their collaboration and to exploit the legacies of both committees.

Digging Deeper – How to Contact MPEG
Communicating the large and sometimes complex array of technology that the MPEG Committee has developed is not a simple task. Experts, past and present, have contributed a series of white-papers and vision documents 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://mpeg.chiariglione.org/technologies.htm.


Further Information
Future MPEG meetings are planned as follows:

  • No. 95, Daegu, KR, 24-28 January, 2011
  • No. 96, Geneva, CH, 21-25 March, 2011
  • No. 97, Torino, IT, 18-22 July, 2011
  • No. 98, Geneva, CH 28 November – 2 December, 2011

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
leonardo@chiariglione.org
This press release and other MPEG-related information can be found on the MPEG homepage:
http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/
The text and details related current Calls are in the Hot News section, http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/hot_news.htm. These documents include information on how to respond to 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 at arianne.hinds@infoprint.com.

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