MPEG Industry Forum

San Ramon / Geneva - 8th July 2003 - At its Annual Meeting in Montreal on 27 June, the MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF), an industry-based MPEG standards advocacy group, unanimously approved expanding its scope to include the promotion of the MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards. Starting on July 1st, the first day of the Forum's new membership year, M4IF's official name is "MPEG Industry Forum" (MPEGIF) The Forum will continue the M4IF name, website and logo for its MPEG-4 activities. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 community members helped prepare the necessary changes to MPEGIF's Statutes.

MPEGIF's goal has been updated to read: "To further the adoption of MPEG Standards, by establishing them as well accepted and widely used standards among creators of content, developers, manufacturers, providers of services, and end users".

Building on M4IF's success as a focal point for MPEG?4 developments and information, the decision to expand its scope came from the membership's desire for a single, strong organization to educate industry on the benefits and synergies of the MPEG standards. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 are complementary to MPEG-4 and MPEG-2, not their successors.

MPEGIF decided to maintain the same $3,000 USD annual fee ($300 USD for not-for-profits) for all of its members, regardless of their area of interest, and now accepts membership applications from companies and organizations working on MPEG-7 and MPEG-21.

MPEGIF will expand its current marketing efforts to reflect its new scope. MPEG-4 will remain the primary focus of most members, and the Forum will continue to market the M4IF brand name and the MP4 logo. MPEGIF is building MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 web presence modelled after the popular www.m4if.org website.

The 4th "Workshop and Exhibition on MPEG-4" (WEMP) is scheduled for Spring 2004 in Europe, under the working title "Workshop and Exhibition on Emerging MPEG Technologies". Like MPEGIF, its expanded focus will cover the emerging MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards, as well as the new Advanced Video Coding standard (AVC, also known as H.264 and MPEG?4 AVC).

"I am excited that, with our expansion, we have fulfilled the wish expressed by our membership and industry over a year ago," said MPEGIF President Rob Koenen. "Our constituency strongly believes in the MPEG standards which, together with other open international standards, provide highly valued interoperability to end-users and industry."

About MPEGIF

MPEGIF represents almost 100 companies from diverse industries evenly distributed across North America, Europe and Asia, addressing MPEG adoption issues that go beyond the charter of ISO/IEC MPEG. Activities of the forum include marketing, a comprehensive MPEG-4 interoperability program (including AVC), logo certification, presence at trade shows, several working groups and an annual conference. For more information visit: http://www.mpegif.org

About MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is the interactive coding standard for all digital multimedia platforms. Developed by the "Moving Picture Experts Group" that designed MPEG-2 (the digital television standard), MPEG-1 and MP3. Object-based and extending beyond video and audio, MPEG-4 supports rich, interactive, standards-based multimedia from low bandwidths to transparent quality.

About MPEG-7

MPEG-7 is a recently finalized MPEG standard for description of multimedia content. It will be used for indexing, cataloging, advanced search tools, program selection, smart reasoning about content and more. The standard comprises syntax and semantics of multimedia descriptors and descriptor schemes. MPEG-7 is an important standard because it allows the management, search and retrieval of ever-growing amounts of content locally stored, on-line and in broadcasts.

About MPEG-21

MPEG-21 is an emerging MPEG standard describing how different elements to build an infrastructure for the delivery and consumption of multimedia content - existing or under development - work together. MPEG-21 addresses management of and access to content.

MPEG-21 includes a universal declaration of multimedia content, tools facilitating the dynamic adaptation of content to the delivery network and to consumption devices and conditions, and various tools for making Digital Rights Management more interoperable.

More information:

Martin Jacklin, Media Relations, (Switzerland), +41 (79) 291 1882, martin.jacklin at m4if.org and Paul Ritchie, MPEGIF Executive Director (USA),+1 925 275 6654, paul.ritchie at m4if.org

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