An application-based perspective on universal multimedia access using MPEG-7

Abstract

With the growing ubiquity and portability of multimedia-enabled devices, Universal Multimedia Access is emerging as one of the important applications for the next generation of multimedia systems. The basic concept underlying Universal Multimedia Access is the adaptation, summarization, and personalization of multimedia content according to the user environment. The different dimensions for adaptation include rate reduction, adaptive spatial and temporal sampling, quality reduction, summarization, personalization, and re-editing of the multimedia content. The different relevant dimensions of the user environment include device capabilities, bandwidth, and user preferences, usage context and spatial- and temporal-awareness. The emerging MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards are addressing Universal Multimedia Access in a number of ways. MPEG-7 provides tools for describing transcoding hints, content variations, space and frequency views, and summaries of multimedia content. MPEG-7 also provides tools for describing user preferences and usage history. MPEG-21 is addressing the description of user environment, which includes terminals and networks. In this paper, we present an application-based perspective on Universal Multimedia Access using MPEG-7. We describe the different tools, methods, and systems that use MPEG-7 for enabling Universal Multimedia Access and describe a system for annotating and transcoding images using MPEG-7.