ITL Hosts the Moving
Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) U.S. Meeting
NIST’s Information Access Division (IAD) and the International Committee for IT Standards (INCITS) Technical Committee L3 (Encoding standards for video, audio and still pictures) hosted the 60th meeting of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) in Fairfax, Virginia May 6-10, 2002. This was the first meeting held jointly with the ITU Joint Video Team (JVT). More than 360 registered participants attended, the largest number of experts in over five years. Mike Rubinfeld, Chair of INCITS/L3 and Wo Chang (both from IAD), were the primary contacts for the meeting and had overall management responsibility. This meeting was also the first to be held with a wireless local area network linked to a T1 line, which enabled participants to have wireless connection to the Internet. Dr. Charles Fenimore and Alexei Nikolaev of ITL’s Convergent Information Systems Division, supplied test equipment and ran tests for the Joint Video Team group meetings.
Wo Chang, Chair of MPEG-7 Interoperability and Profiling Group, presented the group’s progress to the open plenary. The group has reached initial agreement of how to define the MPEG –7 profiles for conformance and interoperability testing, how to test the applications based on the descriptions, and established a collection of profiles and applications which may be used for testing. These are major steps in meeting several key responsibilities of this working group including: defining MPEG-7 interoperability, defining conformant points so that a standard conformance testing can be performed, defining MPEG-7 profiles and levels of MPEG-7 applications and systems for interoperability, utilizing the NIST MPEG-7 Interoperability Test Bed for conformance and interoperability testing, creating central repository hosting standardized MPEG-7 profiles and levels definitions. The Convener of the MPEG Working Group praised the MPEG-7 Interoperability and Profiling Group for its accomplishments to date.
A special social event was held at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum on Wednesday evening, May 8. The event was hosted by INCITS/L3 and NIST and sponsored by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Microsoft, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Content Guard, Inc and Rightscom, Ltd,featuring an IMAX theatre presentation in 3D of the Space station. Guests included John Benton, Executive Officer of the Air & Space Museum, Christian Israel, Assistant Undersecretary for Technology Policy at the Department of Commerce, Carey Sherman, senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the RIAA, Scott Dinsdale, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy for the MPA and Richard Lappenbusch, Vice President of Strategic Planning for Microsoft, and Leonardo Chiariglione, Convener of ISO MPEG Working Group. Mike Rubinfeld (IAD) served as Master of Ceremony.
Wo Chang, ext. 3439