Considerations about MPEG 7

MPEG-7, formally named ”Multimedia Content Description Interface”, is a standard for describing the multimedia content data that supports some degree of interpretation of the information’s meaning, which can be passed onto, or accessed by, a device or a computer code.
MPEG-7 offers a comprehensive set of audiovisual Description Tools (the metadata elements and their structure and relationships, that are defined by the standard in the form of Descriptors and Description Schemes) to create descriptions (i.e., a set of instantiated Description Schemes and their corresponding Descriptors at the users will), which will form the basis for applications enabling the needed effective and efficient access (search, filtering and browsing) to multimedia content. This is a challenging task given the broad spectrum of requirements and targeted multimedia applications, and the broad number of audiovisual features of importance in such context.

The major MPEG-7 elements are Descriptors, Description Schemes, a Description Definition Language, and Systems Tools. Organization of MPEG-7 Multimedia DSs includes the following areas: Basic Elements, Content Description, Content Management, Content Description, Content Organization, Navigation and Access, and User Interaction.

There are the eight MPEG-7 standard parts:

• MPEG-7 Systems specify system tools to prepare MPEG-7 Descriptions for efficient transport and storage (through binarization) to allow synchronization between content and description.

• MPEG-7 Description Definition Language specifies the DDL.

• MPEG-7 Visual specifies the description tools dealing with visual-only descriptions.

• MPEG-7 Audio specifies the description tools dealing with audio-only descriptions. This includes both Descriptors and Description Schemes.

• MPEG-7 Multimedia Description Schemes specify the Descriptors and Description Schemes for generic features and multimedia descriptions. This includes the Descriptors and Description Schemes that aren’t specific to audio or video.

• MPEG-7 Reference Software gives a software implementation of the MPEG-7 standard parts. The MPEG-7 Reference Software, which is based on the MPEG Experimentation Model, is normative with respect to the decoding behaviour. This means all conformant implementations should produce the same decoding results as the reference software. We can use this reference software free of copyright for building compliant MPEG-7 implementations. (Note that free of copyright isn’t the same as free of patent rights.)

• MPEG-7 Conformance specifies the guidelines and procedures for testing whether descriptions and consumption engines are compliant with the MPEG-7 standard.

• MPEG-7 Extraction and Use of Descriptions provide information on the extraction and use of some of the description tools. Notably, it gives insight into reference software and alternative approaches.

Frontend

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