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Accredited Standards Committee* X3, Information Technology NEWS RELEASE Doc. No.: PR/96-101 Reply to: Deborah J. Donovan at ddonovan@itic.nw.dc.us
Washington D.C., December 1996 - Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Technology is announcing the public comment period for ISO/IEC CD 14478 (Parts 1-4). The public review extends from December 20, 1996 to February 18, 1997.
Scope PREMO (14478 Part 1) The International Standard ISO/IEC 14478 specifies techniques for creating interactive single and multiple media applications which recognize and emphasize the interrelationships among user interfaces, multimedia applications, and multimedia information interchange.
This International Standard defines a flexible environment to encompass modular functionality and is extensible through the creation of future components, both within and outside of standards committees. It supports a wide range of multimedia applications in a consistent way, from simple drawings up to full motion video and virtual reality environments.
This International Standard is independent of any particular implementation language, development environment, or execution environment. For integration into a programming environment, the standard shall be embedded in a system dependent interface following the particular conventions of that environment. This International Standard provides versatile packaging techniques beyond the capabilities of monolithic single-media systems. This allows rearranging and extending functionality to satisfy requirements specific to particular application areas. This standard is developed incrementally with Parts 1 through 4 initially available. Other components are expected to be standardized by ISO/IEC JTC1 SC24 or other subcommittees.
Methods for the definition, presentation, and manipulation of both input and output objects are described. This International Standard provides a framework within which application-defined ways of interacting with the environment can be integrated. Application-supplied structuring of objects is also allowed and can, for example, be used as a basis for the development of toolkits for the creation of, presentation of, and interaction with multimedia and hyper-media documents and product model data.
This International Standard is able to support construction, presentation and interaction with multiple simultaneous inputs and outputs using multiple media. Several such activities may occur simultaneously, and the application program can adapt its behaviour to make best use of the capabilities of its environment.
This International Standard includes interfaces for external storage, retrieval and interchange of multimedia objects.
Scope PREMO (14478 Part 2)
This part of ISO/IEC 14478 lists an initial set of object types and non- object types useful for the construction of, presentation of, and interaction with multimedia information. This part is dependent on the PREMO object model defined in clause 8 of ISO/IEC 14478-1. The foundation component does not depend on any other components.
Scope PREMO (14478 Part 3)
This part of ISO/IEC 14478 defines a standard set of multimedia system services that can be used by multimedia application developers in a variety of computing environments. The focus is on enabling multimedia applications in a heterogeneous, distributed computing environment. Throughout this document this Part of ISO/IEC 14478 will also be referred to as "Multimedia System Services", and abbreviated as MSS.
The Multimedia System Services constitutes a framework of "middleware" - system software components lying in the region between the generic operating system and specific applications. As middleware, the Multimedia System Services marshals lower-level system resources to the task of supporting multimedia processing, providing a set of common services which can be used by multimedia application developers.
The Multimedia System Services encompasses the following characteristics:
a) provision of an abstract type for media processing node, extensible through subtyping to support abstractions of real media processing hardware or software;
b) provision of an abstract type for the data flow path or the connection between media processing nodes, encapsulating low-level connection and transport semantics;
c) grouping of multiple processing nodes and connections into a single unit for purposes of resource reservation and stream control;
d) provision of a media dataflow abstraction, with support for a variety of position, time and/or synchronization capabilities;
e) separation of the media format abstractions from the dataflow abstractions;
f) synchronous exceptions and asynchronous events;
g) application visible characterization of object capabilities;
h) registration of objects in a distributed environment by location and capabilities;
i) retrieval of objects in a distributed environment by location and constraints;
j) definition of a Media Stream Protocol to support media independent transport and synchronization.
The Multimedia System Services rely on the object model of ISO/IEC 14478-1 (Fundamentals of PREMO) and the object types and non-object types defined in ISO/IEC 14478-2 (PREMO Foundation Component).
Scope PREMO (14478 Part 4)
This part of ISO/IEC 14478 describes a set of components to provide the construction of, presentation of, and the interaction with Multimedia information. The Multimedia Information can be graphics, video, audio, or other types of presentable media. This information can be enhanced by time aspects.
This part defines a component which uses the set of object and non- object types defined in PREMO Part 2: Foundation Components (ISO/IEC 14478-2), and PREMO Part 3: Multimedia Systems Services (ISO/IEC 14478-3).
Note: This draft international standard is being processed simultaneously as an American National Standard and an International Standard.
Public review comments received after February 18, 1997 will be addressed and considered for future balloting and/or revision.
Submit all comments to: X3 Secretariat, Attn.: Deborah J. Donovan, 1250 Eye Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005, Email: ddonovan@itic.nw.dc.us. Send a copy to: ANSI, Attn.: BSR Center, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
A call for possible patents and pertinent issues (copyrights, trademarks) is also being issued. Please submit information on these issues to the X3 Secretariat at 1250 Eye Street NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20005. Email: x3sec@itic.nw.dc.us FAX: (202) 638-4922.
These document can be purchased from American National Standards Institute, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, New York 10036. Telephone: 212-642-4900
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