Tracking MPEG-4 At Streaming Media East

Applications
The day ended with the Applications session, which gave us a better view of real world examples of MPEG-4 content produced today, mixed with some perspectives on what it will lead to in the coming years.

• Bernhard Grill, Head of the Audio Department of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft -Inst., discussed some of the research efforts in wave field synthesis for audio coding and then described an object-based orchestral MPEG-4 application. With individual instruments and sections composed as separate objects in the audio stream, this particular implementation could lend itself to various distance learning applications as well as creating a highly interactive user interface to the underlying content.

• Marty Levine, VP of Business Development at iVAST, Inc. demonstrated some of the capabilities of their MPEG-4 authoring application including a stream encoding to 500 kbps and modeled after a full DVD title incorporating audio, video, graphics, animations and user interactivity. He also mentioned the extension of this type of application using full-screen high definition video content starting at 1.6 Mbps, implying that we may see HD-DVDs using MPEG-4 in the near future.

• Chalan Aras, VP of Marketing at ManyStreams, Inc. described the business arena that this newcomer to the industry is targeting, although no product demonstrations were available. ManyStream's business is the delivery of rich, multi-level content over IP and potentially television broadcasting, utilizing the features of MPEG-4 to create niche, targeted programming and advertising.

• Shawn Abwani, VP of Business Development at Envivio, was back to showcase applications being developed with his company’s products. He demonstrated a music video incorporating textual content and product endorsements for a more compelling end-user experience.

J.C. Spierer, Director at DistanceVision, Inc lead a general discussion of other applications the vendors are seeing for MPEG-4 which include corporate communications, Interactive TV, targeted advertising, multicast over a wide variety of devices, and video-on-demand to set-tops and televisions over DSL. He also made a point of discussing how each of the panelists sees MPEG-4 applications evolving in the next 2-3 years. Most agreed wireless, mobile applications, perhaps with more interactivity for multimedia messaging, is likely, but saw the use of object-oriented coding techniques as being further out, unless there's a killer app lying in wait out there today that we don't know about.