mpeg-7 seminar report

Seminar Report ’03 MPEG-7

ABSTRACT

As more and more audiovisual information becomes available from many

sources around the world, many people would like to use this information for

various purposes. This challenging situation led to the need for a solution that

quickly and efficiently searches for and/or filters various types of multimedia

material that’s interesting to the user.

For example, finding information by rich-spoken queries, hand-drawn

images, and humming improves the user-friendliness of computer systems and

finally addresses what most people have been expecting from computers. For

professionals, a new generation of applications will enable high-quality

information search and retrieval. For example, TV program producers can search

with “laser-like precision” for occurrences of famous events or references to

certain people, stored in thousands of hours of audiovisual records, in order to

collect material for a program. This will reduce program production time and

increase the quality of its content.

MPEG-7 is a multimedia content description standard, (to be defined by

September 2001), that addresses how humans expect to interact with computer

systems, since it develops rich descriptions that reflect those expectations.

Dept. of C.S.E. MESCE, Kuttippuram0


INTRODUCTION

The Moving Pictures Experts Group abbreviated MPEG is part of the

International Standards Organization (ISO), and defines standards for digital

video and digital audio. The primal task of this group was to develop a format to

play back video and audio in real time from a CD. Meanwhile the demands have

raised and beside the CD the DVD needs to be supported as well as transmission

equipment like satellites and networks. All this operational uses are covered by a

broad selection of standards. Well known are the standards MPEG-1, MPEG-2,

MPEG-4 and MPEG-7. Each standard provides levels and profiles to support

special applications in an optimized way.

It's clearly much more fun to develop multimedia content than to index it.

The amount of multimedia content available -- in digital archives, on the World

Wide Web, in broadcast data streams and in personal and professional databases

-- is growing out of control. But this enthusiasm has led to increasing difficulties

in accessing, identifying and managing such resources due to their volume and

complexity and a lack of adequate indexing standards. The large number of

recently funded DLI-2 projects related to the resource discovery of different

media types, including music, speech, video and images, indicates an

acknowledgement of this problem and the importance of this field of research for

digital libraries.

MPEG-7 is being developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group

(MPEG) a working group of ISO/IEC. Unlike the preceding MPEG standards

(MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4) which have mainly addressed coded

representation of audio-visual content, MPEG-7 focuses on representing

information about the content, not the content itself.



The goal of the MPEG-7 standard, formally called the "Multimedia

Content Description Interface", is to provide a rich set of standardized tools to

describe multimedia content.

A single standard which can provide a simple, flexible, interoperable

solution to the problems of indexing, searching and retrieving multimedia

resources will be extremely valuable and widely deployed. Resources described

using such a standard will acquire enhanced value. Compliant hardware and

software tools capable of efficiently generating and interpreting such

standardized descriptions will be in great demand.

DIFFERENT VIDEO FORMATS

Avid PC users will almost certainly remember the first time they were

able to view a video clip on their computer. The clips were about the size of a

postage stamp and were generously referred to as "multimedia". Later, the first

acceptable video clips were used in the opening scenes of computer games. In

some cases, there were even digital 3D animations that couldn't be created in

real-time with the hardware and software that was available in those days. As the

video clips demanded extensive storage space (despite their short length), they

were only available on CD-ROM drives that had recently become popular.

Because of this, many PC's became multimedia-compatible, in a restricted sense,

by the integration of a CD-ROM drive and a soundcard. However, their

limitations soon became apparent: it wasn't possible to run the video clip

smoothly in fullscreen mode even with the most powerful hardware available.

With the development of high performance graphic chips, faster processors and

corresponding software interfaces, today's users are now able to run video clips

in all the usual formats (including fullscreen mode) without problems. We'll

continue with a look at the most video formats and we'll then provide an

overview of their specific applications.



The AVI Format

One of the oldest formats in the x86 computer world is AVI. The

abbreviation 'AVI' stands for 'Audio Video Interlaced'. This video format was

created by Microsoft, which was introduced along with Windows 3.1. AVI, the

proprietary format of Microsoft's "Video for Windows" application, merely

provides a framework for various compression algorithms such as Cinepak, Intel

Indeo, Microsoft Video 1, Clear Video or IVI. In its first version, AVI supported

a maximum resolution of 160 x 120 pixels with a refresh rate of 15 frames per

second. The format attained widespread popularity, as the first video editing

systems and software appeared that used AVI by default. Examples of such

editing boards included Fast's AV Master and Miro/Pinnacle's DC10 to DC50.

However, there were a number of restrictions: for example, an AVI video that

had been processed using an AV Master could not be directly processed using an

interface board from Miro/Pinnacle. The manufacturers adapted the open AVI

format according to their own requirements. AVI is subject to additional

restrictions under Windows 98, which make professional work at higher

resolutions more difficult. For example, the maximum file size under the FAT16

file system is 2 GB. The FAT32 file system (came with OSR2 and Windows 98)

brought an improvement: in connection with the latest DirectX6 module

'DirectShow', files with a size of 8 GB can (at least in theory) be created. In

practice however, many interface cards lack the corresponding driver support so

that Windows NT 4.0 and NTFS are strongly recommended. Despite its age and

numerous problems, the AVI format is still used in semi-professional video

editing cards. Many TV cards and graphic boards with a video input also use the

AVI format. These are able to grab video clips at low resolutions (mostly 320 x

240 pixels).

Apple's Format



The MOV format which originated in the Macintosh world, was also

ported to x86 based PC's. It is the proprietary standard of Apple's Quicktime

application that simultaneously stores audio and video data. Between 1993 and

1995, Quicktime was superior to Microsoft's AVI format in both functionality

and quality. The functionality of the latest generation (Quicktime 4.0) also

includes the streaming of Internet videos (the realtime transmission of videos

without the need to first download the entire file to the computer). Despite this,

Apple's proprietary format is continually losing popularity with the increasing

use of MPEG. Video clips coded with Apple's format are still found on some

CD's because of Quicktime's ability to run on both Macintosh and x86

computers.

MPEG Formats

The MPEG formats are by far the most popular standard. MPEG stands

for "Motion Picture Experts Group" - an international organization that develops

standards for the encoding of moving images. In order to attain widespread use,

the MPEG standard only specifies a data model for the compression of moving

pictures and for audio signals. In this way, MPEG remains platform independent.

One can currently differentiate between four standards: MPEG-1, MPEG-2,

MPEG-4 und MPEG-7. Let's take a brief look at each format separately.

MPEG-1 was released in 1993 with the objective of achieving acceptable

frame rates and the best possible image quality for moving images and their

sound signals for media with a low bandwidth (1 MBit/s up to 1,5 MBit/s). The

design goal of MPEG-1 is the ability to randomly access a sequence within half a

second, without a noticeable loss in quality. For most home user applications

(digitizing of vacation videos) and business applications (image videos,

documentation), the quality offered by MPEG-1 is adequate.



MPEG-2 has been in existence since 1995 and its basic structure is the

same as that of MPEG-1, however it allows data rates up to 100 MBit/s and is

used for digital TV, video films on DVD-ROM and professional video studios.

MPEG-2 allows the scaling of resolution and the data rate over a wide range.

Due to its high data rate compared with MPEG-1 and the increased requirement

for memory space, MPEG-2 is currently only suitable for playback in the home

user field. The attainable video quality is noticeably better than with MPEG-1 for

data rates of approximately 4 MBit/s.

MPEG-4 is one of the latest video formats and its objective is to get the

highest video quality possible for extremely low data rates in the range between

10 KBit/s and 1 MBit/s. Furthermore, the need for data integrity and loss-free

data transmission is paramount as these play an important role in mobile

communications. Something completely new in MPEG-4 is the organization of

the image contents into independent objects in order to be able to address or

process them individually. MPEG-4 is used for video transmission over the

Internet for example. Some manufacturers plan to transmit moving images to

mobile phones in the future. MPEG-4 is intended to form a platform for this type

of data transfer.

MPEG-7 is the latest MPEG family project. It is a standard to describe

multimedia data and can be used independently of other MPEG standards.

MPEG-7 will probably reach the status of an international standard by the year

2001.

The MJPEG Format



The abbreviation MJPEG stands for "Motion JPEG". This format is

practically an intermediate step between a still image and video format, as an

MJPEG clip is a sequence of JPEG images. This is one reason why the format is

often implemented by video editing cards and systems. MJPEG is a compression

method that is applied to every image. Video editing cards such as Fast's AV

Master or Miro's DC50 or the much more inexpensive Matrox Marvel product

series reduce the resulting data stream of a standard television signal from

approximately 30 MB/s (!) to 6 MB/s (MJPEG file). This corresponds to a

compression ratio of 5:1. However, a standard for the synchronization of audio

and video data during recording has not been implemented in the MJPEG format

so that the manufacturers of video editing cards have had to create their own

implementations.

WHAT ARE THE MPEG STANDARDS?

The Moving Picture Coding Experts Group (MPEG) is a working group of

the Geneva-based ISO/IEC standards organization, (International Standards

Organization/International Electro-technical Committee) in charge of the

development of international standards for compression, decompression,

processing, and coded representation of moving pictures, audio, and a

combination of the two. MPEG-7 then is an ISO/IEC standard being developed

by MPEG, the committee that also developed the Emmy Award-winning

standards known as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, and the 1999 MPEG-4 standard.

MPEG-1: For the storage and retrieval of moving pictures

and audio on storage media.

MPEG-2: For digital television, it’s the timely response for

the satellite broadcasting and cable television industries in their transition

from analog to digital formats.



MPEG-4: Codes content as objects and enables those

objects to be manipulated individually or collectively on an audiovisual

scene.

MPEG-1, -2, and -4 make content available. MPEG-7 lets you to find the

content you need.

Besides these standards, MPEG is currently also working in MPEG-21 a

Technical Report about Multimedia Framework.

DEFINING MPEG-7

MPEG-7 is a standard for describing features of multimedia content.

Qualifying MPEG-7

MPEG-7 provides the world’s richest set of audio-visual descriptions.

These descriptions are based on catalogue (e.g., title, creator, rights),

semantic (e.g., the who, what, when, where information about objects and events)

and structural (e.g., the colour histogram - measurement of the amount of colour

associated with an image or the timbre of an recorded instrument) features of the

AV content and leverages on AV data representation defined by MPEG-1, 2 and

4.

Comprehensive Scope of Data Interoperability.

MPEG-7 uses XML Schema as the language of choice for content

description MPEG-7 will be interoperable with other leading standards such as,

SMPTE Metadata Dictionary, Dublin Core, EBU P/Meta, and TV Anytime.



The Key Role of MPEG-7

MPEG-7, formally named “Multimedia Content Description Inter-face,” is

the standard that describes multimedia content so users can search, browse, and

retrieve that content more efficiently and effectively than they could using

today’s mainly text-based search engines. It’s a standard for describing the

features of multimedia content.

MPEG-7 will not standardize the (automatic) extraction of AV

descriptions/features. Nor will it specify the search engine (or any other program)

that can make use of the description. It will be left to the creativity and

innovation of search engine companies, for example, to manipulate and massage

the MPEG-7-described content into search indices that can be used by their

browser and retrieval tools, (see figure 1).

MPEG-7 TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES

It is important to note that MPEG-7 addresses many different applications in

many different environments, which means that it needs to provide a flexible and

extensible framework for describing audio-visual data. Therefore, MPEG-7 will

define a multimedia library of methods and tools. It will standardize:

A set of descriptors: A descriptor (D) is a representation of

a feature that defines the syntax and semantics of the feature representation.

A set of description schemes: A description scheme (DS)

specifies the structure and semantics of the relationships between its

components, which may be both descriptors and description schemes.

A language that specifies description schemes, the

Description Definition Language (DDL): It also allows for the extension



and modification of existing description schemes. MPEG-7 adopted XML

Schema Language as the MPEG-7 DDL. However, the DDL requires some

specific extensions to XML Schema Language to satisfy all the requirements

of MPEG-7. These extensions are currently being discussed through liaison

activities between MPEG and W3C, the group standardizing XML.

Figure 1: The Scope of MPEG-7

One or more ways (textual, binary) to encode

descriptions: A coded description is a description that’s been encoded to

fulfill relevant requirements such as compression efficiency, error resilience,

and random access.

Organization of MPEG-7 Description Tools

Over 100 MPEG-7 Description Tools are currently being developed and

refined. The relationships between the MPEG-7 Description Tools are outlined in

Figure 2. The basic elements, at the lower level, deal with basic data types,

mathematical structures, schema tools, linking and media localization tools, as

well as basic DSs, which are elementary components of more complex DSs. The



Schema tools section specifies elements for creating valid MPEG-7 schema

instance documents and description fragments.

In addition, this section specifies tools for managing and organizing the

elements and datatypes of the schema. Based on this lower level, content

description and management elements can be defined. These elements describe

the content from several viewpoints. Currently five viewpoints are defined:

creation and production, media, usage, structural aspects, and conceptual aspects.

The first three elements primarily address information that’s related to the

management of the content (content management), whereas the last two are

mainly devoted to the description of perceivable information (content

description).

Figure 2: Overview of MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes (DSs)

• Creation and Production: Contains meta information that describes the

creation and production of the content; typical features include title, creator,



classification, and purpose of the creation. Most of the time this information is

author-generated since it can’t be extracted from the content.

• Usage: Contains meta information that’s related to the usage of the content;

typical features involve rights holders, access rights, publication, and financial

information. This information may be subject to change during the lifetime of the

AV content.

• Media: Contains the description of the storage media; typical features include

the storage format, the encoding of the AV content, and elements for the

identification of the media. Note: Several instances of storage media for the same

AV content can be described.

• Structural aspects: Contains the description of the AV content from the

viewpoint of its structure. The description is structured around segments that

represent physical, spatial, temporal, or spatio-temporal components of the AV

content. Each segment may be described by signal-based features (color, texture,

shape, motion, audio) and some elementary semantic information.

• Conceptual Aspects: Contains a description of the AV content from the

viewpoint of its conceptual notions.

The five sets of Description Tools are presented here as separate entities,

however, they are interrelated and may be partially included in each other. For

example, Media, Usage or Creation & Production elements can be attached to

individual segments involved in the structural description of the content. Tools

are also defined for navigation and access and there is another set of tools for

Content organization which addresses the organization of content by

classification, by the definition of collections and by modeling. Finally, the last

set of tools is User Interaction which describes user’s preferences for the

consumption of multimedia content and usage history.



MPEG-7 Working Groups

Currently MPEG-7 concentrates on the specification of description tools

(Descriptors and Description Schemes), together with the development of the

MPEG-7 reference software, known as XM (eXperimentation Model). The XML

Schema Language was chosen as the base for the Description Definition

Language (DDL).

The MPEG-7 Audio group develops a range of Description Tools, from generic

audio descriptors (e.g., waveform and spectrum envelopes, fundamental

frequency) to more sophisticated description tools like Spoken Content and

Timbre. Generic Audio Description tools will allow the search for similar voices,

by searching similar envelopes and fundamental frequencies of a voice sample

against a database of voices. The Spoken Content Description Scheme (DS) is

designed to represent the output of a great number of state of the art Automatic

Speech Recognition systems, containing both words and phonemes

representations and most likely transitions. This alleviates the problem of out-of-

vocabulary words, allowing retrieval even when the original word was wrongly

decoded. The Timbre descriptors (Ds) describe the perceptual features of

instrument sound, that make two sounds having the same pitch and loudness

appear different to the human ear. These descriptors allow searching for melodies

independently of the instruments.

The MPEG-7 Visual group is developing four groups of description tools:

Color, Texture, Shape and Motion. Color and Texture Description Tools will

allow the search and filtering of visual content (images, graphics, video) by

dominant color or textures in some (arbitrarily shaped) regions or the whole

image. Shape Description Tools will facilitate “query by sketch” or by contour

similarity in image databases, or, for example, searching trademarks in

registration databases. Motion Description Tools will allow searching of videos



with similar motion patterns that can be applicable to news (e.g. similar

movements in a soccer or football game) or to surveillance applications (e.g.,

detect intrusion as a movement towards the safe zone).

The MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes group is developing the

description tools dealing with generic and audiovisual and archival features. Its

central tools deal with content management and content description as outlined in

section 2.1.

The MPEG-7 Implementation Studies group is designing and implementing

the MPEG-7 Reference Software known as XM.

The MPEG-7 Systems group is developing the DDL and the binary format

(known as BiM), besides working in the definition of the terminal architecture

and access units.

MPEG-7 APPLICATION DOMAINS

The elements that MPEG-7 standardizes will support a broad a range of

applications (for example, multimedia digital libraries, broadcast media selection,

multimedia editing, home entertainment devices, etc.). MPEG-7 will also make

the web as searchable for multimedia content as it is searchable for text today.

This would apply especially to large content archives, which are being made

accessible to the public, as well as to multimedia catalogues enabling people to

identify content for purchase. The information used for content retrieval may also

be used by agents, for the selection and filtering of broadcasted "push" material

or for personalized advertising. Additionally, MPEG-7 descriptions will allow

fast and cost-effective usage of the underlying data, by enabling semi-automatic

multimedia presentation and editing. All domains making use of multimedia will

benefit from MPEG-7 including,



Digital libraries, Education (image catalogue, musical dictionary, Bio-

medical imaging catalogues…)

Multimedia editing (personalised electronic news service, media

authoring)

Cultural services (history museums, art galleries, etc.),

Multimedia directory services (e.g. yellow pages, Tourist information,

Geographical information systems)

Broadcast media selection (radio channel, TV channel,…)

Journalism (e.g. searching speeches of a certain politician using his name,

his voice or his face)

E-Commerce (personalised advertising, on-line catalogues, directories of

e-shops,…)

Surveillance (traffic control, surface transportation, non-destructive testing

in hostile environments, etc.)

Investigation services (human characteristics recognition, forensics)

Home Entertainment (systems for the management of personal multimedia

collections, including manipulation of content, e.g. home video editing,

searching a game, karaoke,…)

Social (e.g. dating services)

Typical applications enabled by MPEG-7 technology include:

• Audio: I want to search for songs by humming or whistling a tune or, using an

excerpt of Pavarotti’s voice, get a list of Pavarotti’s records and video clips in

which Pavarotti sings or simply makes an appearance. Or, play a few notes on a



keyboard and retrieve a list of musical pieces similar to the required tune, or

images matching the notes in a certain way, e.g. in terms of emotions.

• Graphics: Sketch a few lines on a screen and get a set of images containing

similar graphics, logos, and ideograms.

• Image: Define objects, including color patches or textures, and get examples

from which you select items to compose your image. Or check if your company

logo was advertised on a TV channel as contracted.

• Visual: Allow mobile phone access to video clips of goals scored in a soccer

game, or automatically search and retrieve any unusual movements from

surveillance videos.

• Multimedia: On a given set of multimedia objects, describe movements and

relations between objects and so search for animations fulfilling the described

temporal and spatial relations. Or, describe actions and get a list of scenarios

containing such actions.

Examples of MPEG-7 Applications

The following applications are examples of the type of solutions that MPEG-7

can solve. These application examples represent development work in progress.

There are many more applications being developed around the world.

Content Retrieval using Image as the Query

Figure 3 shows possible ways to search for visual content using the inherent

structural features of an image. In this example there are four image features

detailed. The color histogram feature (1) of an image allows me to search for

images that have the same color. Note, the position of the colors is not important

but rather the amount of similar color in the image is important. The next feature,

spatial color distribution (2) allows me to search for images where the location of



the same color is important. You can see that the added object in the right-bottom

flag does not affect this type of search. You can additionally search for images

that have a similar edge or contour profile as in the spatial edge distribution (3)

search technique. Note, color does not make a difference to this type of search.

Finally, you can see an example of searching by object shape (4). Here, the color

and edge profiles are not important.

Figure 3: Search using image features

Movie Tool

This is an MPEG-7 description tool for video with easy-to-use visual

interface (see figure 4). It is possible to compose a logical structure of the target

content, and to also edit and output an MPEG-7 instance file using this tool.

Automatic segmentation of video content is done by detecting scene changes.

Manual annotation is also possible to allow users provide additional information

about the content. The content is arranged in a hierarchy based on topic and sub-

topics where visual clips are summarized using thumbnails. In the ideal world,

automatic description and organization of content is most desirable but the

variety of possible meanings associated with semantic content make it a difficult

task. This Movie Tool, though, helps speed up the manual annotation process

because of its friendly visual interface environment. Currently, this tool operates



on MPEG-1 input content. Since the logical structure of the content is mapped

directly to its MPEG-7 instance in the editor, users can easily see the

relationships between content and its related MPEG-7 description. This feature

provides is very useful when trying to understand the usage of MPEG-7

description tools and their relationship to content.

Figure 4: Movie Tool

MPEG-7 IN THE 21 ST CENTURY MEDIA LANDSCAPE

MPEG-7 is about the future of media in the 21st century. This is not an

overstatement. MPEG-7 provides a comprehensive and flexible framework for

describing the content of multimedia. To describe content implies knowledge of

elements it consists of, as well as, knowledge of interrelations between those

elements. The most straightforward application is multimedia management,

where such knowledge is prerequisite for efficiency and accuracy. However,

there are other serious implications. Knowledge of the structural features of

multimedia information as well as its semantic features will help generate

solutions that will provide more comprehensive and accurate indexing and search

applications, (leading to greater ability for content manipulation, content reuse -



and thus new content creation). Many issues, it is true, remain including

copyrights issues and interoperability between applications and systems that wish

to adhere to the MPEG-7 standard. But such issues are balanced by incredible

economical, educational, and ergonomic benefits that will be brought by MPEG-

7 technology. Potential concerns will be resolved, and after some years hence, we

will not be able to imagine media without MPEG-7 technologies.

ADVANTAGES OF MPEG-7 – A SUMMARY

1. MPEG Standards have been Successful in the Marketplace.

MPEG standards, to date, have been extremely successful in the

marketplace due to MPEG's unique process of sharing leading-edge technology

while protecting intellectual property. MPEG-7 builds on the demonstrated

success of this process.

2. Taking Advantage of MPEG-7 Expertise

The contributors to MPEG-7 include experts in every portion of the content value

chain: production, post-production, delivery, and consumption. Through this

process MPEG-7 has standardized description schemes for content description,

management, and organization, as well as navigation, access, user preferences

and usage history.

3. Interoperability: rapid uptake of MPEG-7, as it is built on enabling

technologies and standards.

MPEG-7 is harmonizing with has employed (or has otherwise harmonized

with) other standards that have demonstrated success and acceptance in both

traditional media and new media businesses, e.g., W3C (XML, XML Schema),

IETF (URI, URN, URL), Dublin Core, ISO/ANSI Thesaurus guidelines, SMPTE



Metadata Dictionary, TV-Anytime, etc. This will allow rapid integration into

your company's products

Various MPEG-2 solutions are looking to MPEG-7 as the standard for

specifying additional program metadata. For example, ATSC recently announced

an “RFP for Metadata for Advance Electronic Program Guide (EPG)

Functionality”. This request for proposal applies to a protocol for the carriage of

metadata in an ATSC MPEG-2-based digital television broadcast stream to

support advanced EPG functionality in a DTV receiver. The RFP explicitly

states that “it is highly desirable that any ATSC standard for enhanced metadata

to support advanced EPG features should be harmonized with other standards

efforts, such as MPEG-7…”

4. Data Exchange between Subsidiaries

MPEG-7 will enable the content management system at one subsidiary to

leverage the content of another subsidiary. For example, broadcasters and content

producers could categorize, exchange, process and manage assets across

boundaries or along an entire supply chain, e.g., from production house to

advertising agency to a broadcaster’s network.

5. Market Potential for MPEG-7 Applications

According to a Goldman Sachs projection, the market for content management

tools will grow from US$378Million in 2000 to US$4.5Billion by 2005.

Interoperable tools sell better than non-interoperable tools. MPEG-7 is the gold

standard for content management interoperability, not just entertainment

companies - but every company, every industry, everywhere.

6. MPEG-7 will enable a New Generation of Multimedia Applications



MPEG-7 uniquely provides comprehensive standardised multimedia

description tools for content. Descriptions for the catalogue level (e.g. title), the

semantic level (who, what, when, where) and the structural level (spatio-temporal

region, color histogram, timbre, texture) will provide tools for creative

developers to generate new waves of multimedia applications. Standardized

MPEG-7 description tools, then, are a key enabler of the following application

domains:

Search Engines, Digital Libraries, Broadcast Networks, Entertainment

and News Distributors, Streaming Businesses

Dynamic start-up companies, searching for cutting edge technologies.

Governmental, Educational, Law, Medical & Remedial Services, and

Non-profit organizations looking for digital media solutions. For

example, the U.S. Library of Congress receives over 10,000 multimedia

items each week, and is committed to a) the long term preservation of

these multimedia items in digital format, and b) making much of their

collection accessible to U.S. citizens in digital format.

XML, Metadata, Modeling/Simulation, & Surveillance Industries.

AI Practitioners, Content Creators and Providers.

7. MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 Tools for Killer Applications

With MPEG-7's sister standard, MPEG-4, an ideal combination is made

for solutions that require efficient streaming of content, content manipulation,

and indexing and retrieval of that content. In particular mobile application

developers have already begun to use these two standards and the trend is set to

hugely increase as the demand for visual and audio information services

continues to grow.



8. MPEG-7 Intellectual Property and Management Protection

MPEG works closely with representatives of the creative industries to

ensure that the best possible protection of the rights of stakeholders is maintained

both in content and in metadata

9. MPEG-7 Makes Content More Valuable

Stored audio-visual content, gathered over the years, by broadcasters,

libraries, and publishers becomes more valuable because, with MPEG-7 indexing

technology, more comprehensive methods are available for users to access and

retrieve more detailed descriptions of that content.

10. MPEG-7 provides a seamless path towards increasingly intelligent

content management systems

We live in the age of convergence, from the level of production through to

distribution and consumption. The technical hardware and communication

infrastructure is evolving and will soon reach the point where computing and

communications will become embedded in everyday objects and environments.

Media will also then become ubiquitous. Ubiquitous media will create a huge

demand for new content, and meeting this demand must involve fundamental

changes to all stages of media production, management and delivery.

Media archives will become vast and interconnected pools of content, too

large to be managed manually. Customization of content within programs, e.g.

substitution of structural elements (characters, music, voices) according to viewer

desires, content scaling for PDA, cell phones, will be not only possible, but easy

and pleasant. MPEG-7 will enable the creation of tools, (through its structured

combination of low level features and high-level meta-data), for coping with this

"outbreak" of generic content.



CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

MPEG-7 is intended to describe audiovisual information regardless of

storage, coding, display, transmission, medium, or technology. It will address a

wide variety of media types including: still pictures, graphics, 3D models, audio,

speech, video, and combinations of these (e.g., multimedia presentations).

Examples of MPEG-7 data are an MPEG-4 stream, a video tape, a CD containing

music, sound or speech, a picture printed on paper, or an interactive multimedia

installation on the web.

MPEG-7 will address both retrieval from digital archives (pull applications)

as well as filtering of streamed audiovisual broadcasts on the Internet (push

applications). It will operate in both real-time and non real-time environments. A

"real-time environment" in this context means that the description is generated at

the same time as the content is being captured (e.g., smart cameras and scanners).

There are many applications and application domains which will potentially

benefit from the MPEG-7 standard. Examples of applications include:

Digital libraries (image catalogue, speech archive);

Broadcast media selection (radio channel, TV channel);

Multimedia editing (personalised electronic news service, media

authoring).

The potential applications cover a wide range of domains which include:

Education;

Journalism (e.g., searching speeches of a certain politician using his name,

his voice or his face);

Cultural services (museums, art galleries);



Film, Video and Radio archives;

Entertainment (e.g., video-on-demand, searching a game, karaoke);

Investigation services (surveillance, human characteristics recognition,

forensics);

Geographical information systems;

Remote sensing (cartography, ecology, natural resources management);

Telemedicine and bio-medical applications.



REFERENCES

(http://www.cselt.it/mpeg/)

(http://www.mpeg-7.com)

www.mpeg-7.com



CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. DIFFERENT VIDEO FORMATS

3. WHAT ARE THE MPEG STANDARDS?

4. DEFINING MPEG-7

5. MPEG-7 TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES

6. MPEG-7 APPLICATION DOMAINS

7. MPEG-7 IN THE 21ST CENTURY MEDIA LANDSCAPE

8. ADVANTAGES OF MPEG-7 – A SUMMARY

9. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

10. REFERENCES



ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I express my sincere thanks to Prof. M.N Agnisarman

Namboothiri (Head of the Department, Computer Science and Engineering,

MESCE), Mr. Sminesh (Staff incharge) for their kind co-operation for

presenting the seminar.

I also extend my sincere thanks to all other members of the faculty of

Computer Science and Engineering Department and my friends for their co-

operation and encouragement.

AYYAPPA DAS M.R.


mpeg-7 seminar report

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