ITL Contributes to Development of Next Generation Multimedia Standard MPEG-7

ITL’s Information Access Division actively participated in the development of the MPEG-7 Multimedia Content Description Interface standard, which was released at the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) meeting in Thailand in December 2001. The MPEG-7 standard provides standardized, core technologies allowing metadata description of audio-visual data content in multimedia environments. Wo Chang provided MPEG-7 schema and sub-schemas validation for the ISO/IEC Multimedia Description Scheme (ISO/IEC 15938-5); MPEG-7 sub-schemas included Description Definition Language (DDL), Visual, Audio, and W3C 1998 XML Namespace.

A new web-based NIST MPEG-7 Validation Service (http://m7itb.nist.gov/m7v) will be made available soon to help MPEG-7 developers validate their encoded MPEG-7 metadata online. Recently, Chang initiated new work in MPEG to develop an MPEG-7 Interoperability Test Bed to provide a validation process for encoded MPEG-7 metadata for conformance and interoperability testing between MPEG-7-based applications and to verify applicability of MPEG-7 technology in a real application or production environment. Chang is the co-chair of the MPEG-7 Applications and Promotion to Industry (MAPI) group, an active steering committee member within MPEG-7 Industry Forum (M7IF), and serves as the webmaster for the MPEG-7 website (http://mpeg-industry.com).

CONTACT: Wo Chang, ext. 3439