[M4IF Technotes] [M4IF Infolist] OpenML?

[AVARO Olivier FTRD/DIH/REN]

Dear Bill, all,
> I was down at Siggraph yesterday, about the only thing 
> interesting I noticed
> was the announcement about OpenML. Has anyone considered it's 
> functionality
> relative to MPEG4? They have a diagram in their spec that 
> indicates some
> level of intra-operability. 
> http://www.khronos.org/OpenMLWhitePaperV2.pdf

I am not sure what diagram you are refering to. I could not find it in the
document. I understand that OpenML could be to MPEG-4 what OpenGL is to
VRML, i.e. a set of low level APIs on which one can develop an MPEG-4
Browser. It seems to me that the goal is ambitious but that there is a
strong demand for open framework for that. So, yes, let's see. An
interesting sanity check for OpenML could be to implement an MPEG-4 browser
using their APIs. It seems to me a perfect application for them.
> Seems that all kinds of overlapping open formats are 
> appearing. I think
> Scaleable Vector Graphics may be loosely related to Flash or 
> your BIFS. Have
> you seen that yet? Comments?  http://www.adobe.com/svg/

SVG, like Flash, SMIL or VRML are interesting but fragmented initiatives to
provide solutions for interactive multimedia scene representation. The major
drawbacks in this fragmentation are :
- Although they are in general reasonnably good in there domains of
expertise, these solutions are not integrated (ex : integration with
streamed media, integration of 2D and 3D, integration of natural and
synthetic content, ...). It is a serious concern for what is multimedia
nowadays. For example, if you have a 2D app. and you want to grow with a bit
of 3D because hardware allows for it and clients request it, you have to
change completly your system. MPEG provides such integrated framework as
well as bridges from these languages to MPEG (ex: all VRML can be compiled
in MPEG, most of SMIL is integrated in XMT, the eXtensible MPEG-4 Textual
Format, Flash and SVG can be compiled into BIFS).
- These solutions are mainly dedicated to one type of environment, the Web,
which is the delivery environment that imposes the easier constraints on the
media. The MPEG architecture has been designed to be transport agnostic
since the beginning and MPEG experts have designed efficient solutions for
the delivery of MPEG in various environment (ex : IP, MPEG-2 transport, MP4
file, ...). None of the MPEG competitors can be as ubiquitous as easily, by
design. None of them are as efficient in delivery environments where things
such as bitrate and synchronization are important issues. Adapting an MPEG
application to a given delivery environment has been made as easy as can be.
- Finally, multimedia representation is not the only issue. To make a
successfull applications you also need to deal with the protection of your
media information, possibly metadata you want to attach to it, usage rights,
... To make this work well, serious integration (ex : IPMP-Intellectual
Property Management and Protection Systems can now be attached to MPEG-4
content, MPEG-7 metadata can be associated to MPEG-4 streams ...). To my
knowledge, this global vision is only available in MPEG. 
Kind regards,
Olivier