Multimedia initiative by Chiariglione, Reader and others. It integrates MPEG-4 with other standards...........
eet.com
Initiative seeks to integrate multimedia content for digital-TV transmissions
By Junko Yoshida
LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands - With a goal to integrate 2-D, 3-D and
streaming content for digital TV programming, leaders from key international
technology development forums gathered here this week to launch a new
initiative to harmonize the various multimedia streams. Founders of the
Advanced Interactive Content (AIC, pronounced "ace") initiative are hoping
that a variety of advanced multimedia technologies - thus far developed
and grown independently - will finally converge on a common platform.
The group plans to draft the spec before the end of this year.
Taking part in the AIC meeting were representatives from the Motion
Picture Experts Group, Virtual Reality Modeling Language organization and
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). The initiative will "write
an open specification to integrate and harmonize VRML, MPEG-4 and
Broadcast HTML into a seamless stream," said Rob Glidden, co-chairman
of VRML 3-D Integrated Media Working Group, and one of 12 founding
members of AIC.
To a certain degree, the new initiative shares a common objective with the
Intel Corp.-led Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF). Both
aim to create a content-programming platform for a broadcast environment.
The AIC proponents, however, are going a few steps further, according to
Cliff Reader, a key player in the MPEG-4 standard development and also
an AIC founding member. "While many in the industry today are thinking
how they can add HTML to TV," Reader said, "our vision is how we can
create a rich set of 2-D and 3-D objects, audiovisual streaming content in a
broadcast environment, for which HTML - or an application like seeing
Web pages on a TV - may be only a part."
ATSC's DTV Application Software Environment (DASE) group is
examining two competing proposals, one by ATVEF and the other currently
being refined by the Broadcast HTML team within the DASE. BHTML,
written in the emerging Extensible Markup Language, is designed for tight
integration with the Java framework.
Given that AIC lists the chairman of the DASE group as well as the
BHTML team leader among its founders, it's no wonder the effort is already
causing a stir among ATVEF backers. (The DASE chairman is Aninda
DasGupta of Philips Research; Ted Wugofski of Gateway is the BHTML
team leader.)
Some believe the motivation is to promote BHTML, even if the ATSC
doesn't wind up ratifying that technology. One executive in the ATVEF
camp, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, warned, "The AIC, not
being a due-process standards body, is in questionable territory if it
presumes to invoke an international platform standard based on BHTML."
AIC members vigorously disagree. AIC is founded mostly by individual
technical leaders of industry forums and is committed to serving as integrator
of disparate standards. It is not a consortium of corporations vying to
promote a proprietary spec. "This [AIC] is not yet another forum to set a
standard," said Glidden.
Pointing to longstanding integration efforts between VRML and Extensible
Markup Language, as well as between MPEG-4 and VRML, Glidden said,
"This is a natural extension of what we have been doing at each of the
groups." Moreover, the initiative fills gap in work done by each group thus
far. Each member is responsible for sharing any developments discussed in
AIC with his original standards body. Thus, after drafting a spec, the AIC
members would have to win over the appropriate bodies and get the
specification approved there. "We see ourselves more as a facilitator,"
Glidden said.
As for BHTML, Glidden said, "Although we see BHTML as a good
technical solution, we have no intention to replace the development work by
the BHTML team at the DASE group. Nor will our work within the AIC be
dependent upon their BHTML development. We may end up finding a
solution similar to BHTML, but not necessarily BHTML itself."
AIC founders appear to believe that the problem they must solve is fairly
straightforward. Because there is no well-defined way to integrate such key
technologies as VRML, MPEG-4 and BHTML, their job is to develop and
specify syntax and tools for this integration. More specifically, they plan to
add a BHTML stream to MPEG-4, while defining "an integration of
language and interface between BHTML and VRML/Binary Format for
Scenes," or BIFS, said Glidden. In his view, BIFS and VRML are dual
representations of the same content, BIFS in a binary form and VRML in a
textual.
As for tools, "The use of MPEG-4 in this integration effort is a marriage
made in heaven," said Reader. MPEG-4, an object-oriented data
representation, uses the same tools as MPEG-2, compressed digital
audio/video streams. The two share the same timing model, the same clock
reference and the same time stamps.
"All these things allow a perfect synchronization between MPEG-4's objects
and DTV audio/video streams, a precisely guaranteed quality of service,"
Reader said. "The exact lip-sync experience of streaming can now be fused
with 3-D graphics objects and VRML."
The AIC founders believe no new technology is needed for such an
integration work. And while there may be a few ways of integrating these
tools, they hope to specify just one.
The AIC initiative has already set a very tight and ambitious schedule. The
group will deliver the spec by December, and validate it in a working
implementation by March 1999. The group set the timetable by mapping its
efforts onto the concurrent time line set for the open standards processes of
MPEG, VRML and ATSC. Noting that the dozen AIC founders are all
experts in actually writing specifications in their respective standards
organizations, "We set the schedule by already allocating resources from our
members," said Glidden. He also promised that commercial products based
on the new spec can be launched in the fourth quarter of next year.
Content developed on a platform based on the newly integrated spec will be
delivered by using MPEG-2 or Internet Protocol transport protocols. In
other words, the network infrastructure used for the delivery of integrated
2-D, 3-D and streaming content can be a digital broadcast TV network or
the Internet. It's possible to have integration, in the same device, of content
coming from a broadcast and an interactive (online) connection.
Anticipated applications leveraging the AIC spec include graphic-rich
electronic program guides with related cross links and on-screen program
previews, home shopping whereby consumers can inspect products via
streaming video and 3-D images and detailed 3-D replicas of historic sites.
The spec might also make it possible for viewers to access bibliographical
content and unused video footage.
Besides Reader, Glidden, DasGupta and Wugofski, those listed as AIC
founding members are Olivier Avaro of France Telecom, chairman of the
MPEG Systems Committee; Don Brutzman, the VRML consortium's vice
president of technology; Leonardo Chiariglione of MPEG; Rob Koenen,
chairman of the MPEG Requirements Committee; Chris Marrin of Sony, a
VRML consortium member; Rick Rafey of Sony, the VRML consortium
director; Pete Schirling of IBM; and Neil Trevett, president of the VRML
consortium and vice president of 3Dlabs.
The AIC initiative is open to anyone interested in participating in the
specification process. The next meeting is scheduled for mid-October in
Atlantic City, N.J. |
