[M4IF News] Fairfax MPEG Press Release

Wed May 15 15:14:59 EDT 2002

I just received the following Press Release from Peter Schirling.
Rob
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	INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
	 ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
		  ISO/IEC / JTC1 / SC29 / WG11
	   CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO
	    						ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC
29/WG 11 N4733
								May 2002 -
Fairfax, VA (US)
Source:  Convenor of mpeg
Status:  Approved by WG11
Subject: MPEG Press Release
Date:    May 2002
MPEG CONTINUES ITS WORK ACROSS ALL ASPECTS OF ITS MULTIMEDIA CHARTER
Fairfax, Virginia, 15 May 2002. At its 60th meeting, held from 6-10 
May 2002, MPEG reached two important milestones, the completion of 
the first specification in the suite of standards known as MPEG-21 
and the first ballot for its joint video codec development effort 
with the ITU known as the Joint Video Team (JVT), that is developing 
a new and important video standard for industry.
Digital Item Declaration (ISO/IEC FDIS 21000-2) was elevated to Final 
Draft International Standard and will become an International 
Standard following a 2 month ballot by JTC 1. This is an important 
milestone as MPEG has now standardized a fundamental model for the 
transaction of any content that may be referenced, including 
multimedia content. Subsequent standards in the MPEG-21 suite will 
use and further enable this framework by specifying Digital Item 
Identification, Intellectual Property Management and Protection, 
Rights Expression Language, Right Data Dictionary, Digital Item 
Adaptation and the MPEG-21 Reference Software. These parts will be 
finalized by MPEG over the next two years.
Also, the new video coding standard being developed jointly with the 
ITU was promoted to Committee Draft, the first ballot stage leading 
to an ISO/IEC International Standard. This new standard will provide 
a significant improvement in compression performance for general 
video coding applications. "I am very pleased with the work that the 
JVT has achieved in such a short time since it was formed in December 
of 2001." said Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, Convenor of the MPEG 
Committee. Dr. Gary Sullivan, Chair/Rapporteur of the JVT also 
expressed his congratulations to the team. "It has been very 
rewarding to see such a large group of experts collaborate on a 
complex topic. They are to be congratulated." For reference, the 
standard will be identified both as ITU-T Rec. H.264 and ISO/IEC 
14496-10 "Advanced Video Coding". In addition to the video work, MPEG 
Systems has begun the work needed to carry this new video standard in 
its existing systems multiplex standards, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4.
In other important news from Fairfax, MPEG reviewed 25 responses to 
its call for technologies on Digital Item Adaptation. MPEG has 
produced its first working draft containing technology needed to 
adapt digital items and their associated resources to a wide variety 
of consumer devices along with an adaptation software model to assist 
early adopters and implementers. Digital Item Adaptation is an 
important technology for content authors and owners, and service 
providers not just the consumers of MPEG streams. When coupled with 
the Audio-Visual standards of MPEG-2, or 4 and the metadata standard 
in MPEG-7, and the other standards being developed in MPEG-21, DIA as 
it has come to be known, will be another powerful tool in the 
multimedia industry. Combined with the specifications currently under 
development to provide a Rights Data Dictionary and a Rights 
Expression Language, this will provide tools to enable the 
association of permissions governing the context in which content may 
be adapted.
Other MPEG news
As reported from the last MPEG meeting MPEG-4 Audio Extension work 
continues. At the Fairfax meeting Audio Extension 1 progressed to 
Committee Draft. This provides technology for extending the bandwidth 
of existing MPEG-4 audio coders using a relatively small amount of 
side information.
MPEG continues to seek new technology and has issued a Call for 
Proposals on Advanced Text and 2D Graphics. MPEG has identified the 
need for extensions of the Systems part of the MPEG-4 standard. These 
requirements are mainly in the areas of Text representation and 2D 
graphics representation. Responses are due to MPEG by 16 July, in 
time to be considered at its next meeting from 22-26 July 2002, 
Klagenfurt, Austria.
MPEG reminds industry of outstanding calls due back shortly.
1. Call for Requirements for Persistent Association of Identification 
and Description with Content (N4682) published at the 59th Meeting in 
Jeju are due by Sunday 14th July 2002 prior to the 61st Meeting in 
Klagenfurt.
2. Call for Proposals for MPEG-7 Systems Extensions notably to 
address additional coding efficiency for MPEG-7 descriptions as well 
as MPEG-21 Digital Item Declarations. The response to these calls 
will be reviewed at its 61st meeting in Klagenfurt, Austria from 22 
to 26 July 2023
3. The Multimedia Description Schema subgroup request for a 
Registration Authority has resulted in an SC29 "Request for 
Candidates for the Registration Authority for ISO/IEC 21000-3". 
Responses should be forwarded directly to the SC29 Secretariat: Ms. 
Yukiko Ogura (ogura   itscj.ipsj.or.jp) or visit 
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/ for information and details of this 
call.
Details of how to obtain MPEG's CfP's and other public information is 
shown below.
Further information
Future MPEG meetings are as follows: 61st meeting: 22-26 July 2002 
(Klagenfurt, Austria), 62nd meeting: 21-25 October 2002 (Shanghai, 
China), 63rd meeting 9-13 December 2002.
For further information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, (Convenor of MPEG, Italy)
TILAB
Via G. Reiss Romoli, 274
10148 Torino, ITALY
Tel.: +39 11 228 6120; Fax: +39 11 228 6299
Email: mailto:leonardo.chiariglione   tilab.com
or
Peter Schirling (HoD US MPEG Committee)
IBM Research - Digital Media Standards
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://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com
For the Outstanding Call for Proposals, see the Hot News section, 
http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/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.