MPEG-21 spec adds QoS, rights management features

MPEG-21 spec adds QoS, rights management features
By Peter Clarke, EE Times
October 5, 2000 (5:04 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20001005S0039

LONDON — A new standard being proposed under the Motion Picture Experts Group umbrella would add a layer of quality-of-service (QoS) and digital rights management to existing codecs and digital multimedia communication schemes, such as MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.

The development could be significant for designers of Internet-connected equipment since the standard is expected, in part, to let engineers design for average processor performance loads in terminals rather than worst-case requirements.

Spearheading the new standard is the MPEG-21 committee, launched by the publishing of a proposed draft technical report" by the MPEG ISO organization early in September.

The committee's purpose is to develop a standard that makes it possible to use a variety of multimedia resources efficiently across a variety of networks and devices. It is expected to include scalable methods to support quality-of-s ervice decisions, graceful failure or stepping down of services, and models of value provision and consumption in support of digital rights management and e-commerce.

Jan Bormans, group leader for the multimedia image compression at the IMEC consortium (Leuven, Belgium) and the MPEG-21 editor, said that one key issue was processor loading in network terminals that could vary greatly with the latest codecs.

"For example, MPEG-2 behavior is a function of content but MPEG-4 behavior is a function of content and the user's interaction," Bormans said. He illustrated this by saying that in an MPEG-2 data stream the processing load varied with the amount of fast motion in the sequence, but that for a 3-D MPEG-4 scene which a user could virtually wander through it depended on the user's interactions.

"The loading depends on what you ask and engineers can't anymore design for the worst case," said Diederik Verkest, manager of embedded-systems design at IMEC. "You would like to design for the average case and then make sure that performance degrades gracefully."

Although IMEC and others are researching algorithmic methods to minimize and smooth processing loads in such circumstances, Bormans said that the variable loading problem, together with the firestorm of controversy surrounding MP3 file management, suggested a more generic solution was required.

Bormans said MPEG-21's work would begin with a call for proposals inviting the submission of solutions to specified requirements. That will be issued at the MPEG meeting to be held at La Baule, France, later this month.

"We expect MPEG-21 to be at the draft committee stage by December 2001 and to turn up in products by the end of 2004 or the beginning of 2005," he said.

Bormans said MPEG-21 was so named because it will be a quality-of-service, rights management and e-commerce framework for the 21st century.

Leonardo Chiariglione, executive director of the Secure Digital Music Initiative and a leader in the MPEG group, has been a main pro ponent of the MPEG-21 concept. SDMI is developing a generic architecture to handle security and digital rights management for Internet audio.