[M4IF News] 58th meeting MPEG Press Release

[Rob Koenen]

MPEG STARTS DEVELOPMENT OF RIGHTS LANGUAGE, APPROVES JOINT VIDEO 
TEAM WITH ITU EXPERTS TO SET NEW VIDEO CODING STANDARD 
Pattaya, Thailand, December 7, 2001. At its 58th meeting, from 2-7 
December 2001, MPEG reviewed 9 responses to its Call for Proposals 
on a Rights Data Dictionary and Rights Expression Language (RDD-REL) 
issued in July. This marks the beginning of the collaborative phase 
of this very important work, which is scheduled for International 
Standard in March 2003. The Rights Data Dictionary work will proceed 
from this meeting forward. In so-called 'core experiments', MPEG will 
refine the baseline architecture and the content of the Rights 
Expression Language to satisfy the extensive requirements for rights 
expression in a multimedia framework. A working draft of the RDD 
specification is available on the MPEG web site, and the REL working 
draft will be available shortly. The RDD and REL specifications will 
allow interoperable large-scale exchange of digital media, including 
subscription services, trusted peer-to-peer services and a wide 
variety of other distribution models. 
The specifications are part of the MPEG-21 effort to specify a 
comprehensive, interoperable multimedia framework, which started in 
1999. Other elements include a technical report also just finalized 
and soon to be published. Other work includes the 'Digital Item 
Declaration' and the Digital Item Identification & Description, and 
an interoperable architecture for Intellectual Property Management 
and Protection. 
A historic joint partnership was established between ISO/IEC and the 
ITU at the Pattaya ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG meetings with the 
formation of a new Joint Video Team (JVT).  This action reunites the 
powerful team of the same two organizations that designed the previous 
MPEG-2 video and systems standards (also known as ISO/IEC 13818, and 
ITU-T H.262 and H.222.0).  The formation of the JVT follows the 
demonstration of significant advances in video compression technology 
by the VCEG H.26L project in tests conducted by MPEG just prior to 
its July meeting.  The JVT project will take over the prior H.26L 
project of the ITU-T and will create a single interoperable solution 
for a next generation of standard video coding.  The new standard 
design is expected to be approved by MPEG as a new part of MPEG-4 and 
by ITU-T as an ITU-T Recommendation.  A key achievement expected from 
the JVT project is a substantial improvement in video coding 
efficiency for a broad range of application areas.
Other MPEG News
MPEG issued a Preliminary Call for Proposals for Digital Item 
Adaptation. This new element of MPEG?21 set will be a specification 
for tools that will allow adaptation of multimedia content to the 
environment in which it will be 'consumed' (e.g., read, watched, 
listened to). MPEG expects to standardize tools for describing the 
terminal, the network and user preferences. Many descriptive tools 
already exist in well-defined application spaces, and MPEG anticipates 
adopting those as a part of the specification. A final Call will be 
issued in March, and responses are invited for the May MPEG meeting 
in Fairfax, VA (US). The combination of content descriptions (in 
MPEG-7) and environment descriptions (in MPEG-21) will allow seamless, 
optimized delivery of content under many different and dynamically 
changing conditions.
The work on more interoperable IPMP (Intellectual Property Management 
and Protection) continued with a mapping to MPEG-2. This 
specification, an extension to the MPEG-2 Systems standard, is meant 
for usage in digital set top boxes and the increasingly popular 
'personal video recorders'. It will provide interoperable digital 
rights management in the broadcast space, where MPEG-2 is widely in 
use.
After completing Version 1 of the multimedia description framework 
MPEG-7 at its last (July) meeting, work has now begun on a second 
version. This extension to version will, among other elements, 
include a scheme for linguistic descriptions. Such a description 
scheme allows the formal description of the linguistic aspects of 
multimedia content - in other words, it allows a formal description 
of, e.g., the speech in a film. Such a description scheme can be 
included in a more comprehensive audiovisual description. 
The MPEG committee has completed its standard for the carriage of 
MPEG-4 over IP-based networks - the Internet. In principle, MPEG-4 
does not define a native transport multiplex like MPEG-2 did. This 
standard recognizes the pervasive nature of the Internet and the need 
for transporting MPEG-4 content over IP in a well-defined, 
interoperable fashion. The work was done in collaboration with the 
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
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Further information
Future MPEG meetings are as follows: 59th meeting: 11-15 March 2002 
(Jeju, South Korea), 60th meeting: 6?10 May 2002 (Fairfax, VA, US), 
61st meeting: 22-26 July 2002 (Klagenfurt, Austria).
For further information about MPEG, please contact:
Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, (Convenor of MPEG, Italy)
CSELT
Via G. Reiss Romoli, 274
10148 Torino, ITALY
Tel.: +39 11 228 6120; Fax: +39 11 228 6299
Email: leonardo.chiariglione   cselt.it 
or
Rob Koenen (Chairman MPEG Requirements Group)
InterTrust Technologies Corporation
Tel +1 (408) 855 6891
Email: rob.koenen   ieee.org 
This press release and much 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 and other people that wish to receive MPEG Press Releases 
by email can contact Rob Koenen.