At the 52nd Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland, in June, the MPEG-7 industry focus group was launched. Its purpose is to establish a platform that enables a continuous two-way exchange of ideas between MPEG developers and the electronics industry.
Participants at the Geneva meeting decided to grant access to their own technologies. By doing so, they allowed the electronics industry the opportunity to view and review emerging standards-based solutions. This information will be made available to representatives of any industry interested in fine-tuning the MPEG-7 standard.
To mark the public start of the MPEG-7 industry focus group, a workshop will take place this autumn in Paris. Further information concerning this event is available on the web at www.mpeg-7.com.
Scheduled for release in 2001, the MPEG-7 standard itself is taking final shape. It's expected to offer rich development possibilities in the domain of multimedia content management. In particular, it should provide comprehensive approaches to content identification, indexing, access, retrieval, and distribution—all under the principle of interoperability.