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MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 have become well established and are serving us well. The new MPEG-4, built on its predecessors, offers content purveyors even more alternatives to overcome the limitations of their delivery pipelines, among other benefits. Not just a video compression technology, MPEG-4 is a framework and a standard that provides improved methods of utilizing and exploiting digital media data. With MPEG-4, all content elements can be maintained as discrete objects, enabling richer interactivity than ever before across many different devices.
The new standard enables the integration of the production, distribution, and content-access features of digital television, interactive-graphics applications, and interactive multimedia across Internet protocol, along with wireless, broadcast, satellite, cable, and mobile environments.
Although the advanced compression format of MPEG-4 has been formalized for some time, its acceptance was stalled because of a lack of reasonable licensing terms. On 15 July 2002, MPEG-LA, the licensing firm for the MPEG-4 patent pool, issued new terms more acceptable to its licensees, meaning the standard is finally ready to move into "mainstream" technology. The new licensing agreement arose out of protests from boycott-threatening content producers, including Apple Computer, who released their new version of QuickTime 6 based on MPEG-4 only with the new agreement in July.
MPEG-4 is "hot off the press" and this is your chance to hear about it firsthand. Speaking about the technology and the new licensing agreements will be Rob Koenen and Shawn Ambwani, two of the key people responsible for the development of MPEG-4.
At InterTrust Technologies, Rob Koenen is responsible for strategic technical partnerships and standards. He was previously a research director at KPN Research in The Netherlands, where he worked with A-V image coding, quality assessment, and multimedia standardization. Rob is a founder and current president of the MPEG-4 Industry Forum. As chairman of the MPEG Requirements Group, Rob played a key role in the development of the MPEG-4 standard. He helped define the upcoming MPEG-7 standard and is currently working on MPEG-21.
Shawn Ambwani is a co-founder of Envivio, which was spun off from France Telecom in 1999 to develop MPEG-4 streaming solutions for the broadcast, cable network, and content developer markets. At France Telecom, he conceived and led international teams in the development of Internet services in France and in the US.
Quoted in EE Times, Rob Koenen said: "It's make or break for MPEG-4. The standard was frozen three-and-a-half years ago, and licenses should already have been available." The EE Times goes on to ask whether it's all too little, too late? The MPEG 4 codec faces challenges from Microsoft, Divx, Real Networks and H.264. And the standard may not exactly be cutting-edge anymore, the paper reports. On the other hand, to succeed in the marketplace, a standard need not be the best or the latest technology. Consensus usually beats perfection.
Peter Hammar
Secretary
SMPTE-SF Section
Good coverage of recent MPEG-4 licensing news includes:
www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26219.html
and
zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-944079.html
For more information on MPEG-LA licensing, go to:
www.mpegla.com, www.1394la.com
and www.dvbla.com
With the new MPEG-4 licensing agreement, this Geek News article compares
Apple QuickTime 6 and Windows Media Player 9:
geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Jul/gee20020716015436.htm
Don't miss John Watkinson's outstanding MPEG tutorial in Broadcast Engineering
magazine, released 15 May 2002:
broadcastengineering.com/ar/broadcasting_mpeg_secrets/index.htm
Watkinson states: "MPEG-4 raises a number of questions. Will it replace
MPEG-2? Does it make existing equipment obsolete? How does it affect the
broadcast industry? To answer those questions, this article explores
MPEG-4's predecessors and puts MPEG-4 into perspective...."
A good summary of all MPEG and its history:
www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is224/s99/GroupG/report1.html#_Toc447982102
More information can be found at the home page of the MPEG-4 Industry
Forum:
www.m4if.org and www.cselt.it/mpeg
Read Rob Koenen's paper, "From MPEG-1 to MPEG-21: Creating an Interoperable
Multimedia Infrastructure" to understand the wide range of standards created
by MPEG in its 14 years of activity:
mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/documents/from_mpeg-1_to_mpeg-21.htm
Ample free parking is available in front of and behind the France Telecom
building.
The building (shared by Envivio) is unmarked except for the street
number; it's next door to the ACTUATE building, which is marked
as such.