The Semantics of MPEG-21 Digital Items Revisited

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The Semantics of MPEG-21 Digital Items Revisited The Semantics of MPEG-21 Digital Items Revisited Christian Timmerer Maria Teresa Andrade and Pedro Carvalho Klagenfurt University, Austria INESC Porto, Porto, Portugal Universitätsstrasse 65-67 Rua Dr. Roberto Frias 378 A-9020 Klagenfurt P-4200-465 Porto +43 (0)463 2700 3621 +35 (0)122 2094000 [email protected] {maria.andrade,pedro.carvalho}@inescporto.pt Davide Rogai Giovanni Cordara Comm.it Telecom Italia Lab Via M. Deʼ Bernardi, 65 Via Reiss Romoli, 274 50145, Firenze. Italy 10148, Torino. Italy +39 (0)55 3434277 +39 (0)11 2286389 [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT A Digital Item (DI) is a structured digital object with a standard The MPEG-21 standard forms a comprehensive multimedia representation and metadata, i.e., it is the fundamental unit of framework covering the entire multimedia distribution chain. In transaction and distribution within the MPEG-21 multimedia particular, it provides a flexible approach to represent, process, framework. In other words, it enables the aggregation of and transact complex multimedia objects which are referred to as multimedia resources together with metadata, licenses, identifiers, Digital Items (DIs). DIs can be quite generic, independent of the intellectual property management and protection (IPMP) application domain, and can encompass a diversity of media information, and methods within a standardized structure. With resources and metadata. This flexibility has an impact on the level this definition in mind one can create Digital Items that are very of interoperability between systems and applications, since not all generic and independent of the application domain. Furthermore, the functionality needs to be implemented. Furthermore, it is possible to represent semantically similar (or equal) Digital additional semantic rules may be implemented through the Items in different ways in terms of structure and syntax elements. processing of the Digital Item which is possibly driven by This has an impact on the level of interoperability that can be proprietary metadata. This jeopardizes interoperability and achieved within and across application domains. As consequently raises barriers to the successful achievement of interoperability across domains is somewhat difficult to achieve, augmented and transparent use of multimedia resources. In this we will focus our work on the automated production, delivery, context, we have investigated and evaluated the interoperability at and consumption of Digital Items in heterogeneous environments. the semantic level of Digital Items throughout the automated In this paper we investigated two types of interoperability with production, delivery and consumption of complex multimedia respect to the semantics of Digital Items: resources in heterogeneous environments. This paper describes the studies conducted, the experiments performed, and the — Interoperability at the level of the Digital Item itself, i.e., conclusions reached towards that goal. access/browse media resources and associated metadata, process/consume the Digital Item as such, etc. Categories and Subject Descriptors — Interoperability at the level of the declaration of a Digital H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Item, i.e., processing of its representation in various ways Multimedia Information Systems – audio input/output, (e.g., parsing, validation). evaluation/methodology, video (e.g., tape, disk, DVI). Therefore, we have investigated use cases both in the automated General Terms production of Digital Items and in their delivery within heterogeneous environments to different types of end user Experimentation, Standardization, Languages. terminals. Based on the data models defined by these use cases we Keywords have defined evaluation criteria for the two types of MPEG-21, Digital Items, Semantics, Evaluation, Metadata. interoperability as introduced above. Finally, we have conducted a thorough analysis and evaluated the criteria against the use cases. The innovation brought in by this work, include the identification 1. INTRODUCTION of interoperability problems among compliant implementations of the same standard specification, more specifically the MPEG-21 The aim of the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework is to enable standard, the definition of evaluation criteria and consequently the transparent and augmented use of multimedia resources across a specification of a procedure to evaluate interoperability of MPEG- wide range of networks, devices, user preferences, and 21 DIs produced by those different implementations. communities, notably for trading (of bits). As such, it provides the next step in MPEG's standards evolution, i.e., the transaction of The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 Digital Items among Users [1]. reviews the major building blocks that may constitute a Digital Item and references recent (industry) adoptions. The inputs for the Selection (select_id=lotr1) experiments conducted are described in Section 3 and their results Descriptor are discussed in Section 4. Section 5 concludes the paper and Statement (metadata about the selection) Selection (select_id=lotr2 + further meta) provides recommendations for the construction of interoperable Selection (select_id=lotr3 + further meta) Digital Items. Item Condition (require=lotr1) 2. MPEG-21 DIGITAL ITEMS Component The standard representation of Digital Items is defined by a model Resource (mimeType=video/mpeg, ref=http://…) – in Extended Backus–Naur Form (EBNF) [2] – which describes a Item set of abstract terms and concepts and may be expressed by the Condition (require=lotr2) XML Schema based Digital Item Declaration Language (DIDL) Descriptor Statement (info about this item, e.g., title) [3]. The resulting XML document conformant to DIDL is called a Component DIDL document representing a Digital Item Declaration (DID). Descriptor The DID may contain several building blocks as defined in the Statement (info about this component, e.g. DIDL which defines the structure of the Digital Item. Some of coding params, bit rate, etc.) these buildings blocks are reviewed in the following but for Resource (mimeType=video/mpeg, ref=http://…) detailed information the interested reader is referred to [1][3]. Item Note that the building blocks described here are defined both in Condition (require=lotr3) Component the abstract model and DIDL. Resource (mimeType=video/mpeg, ref=http://…) The Item element comprises a grouping of sub-items or This Digital Item (DI) comprises one item with three sub-items components. In general, an item can be considered as a declarative which constitutes this DI as a collection of DIs, i.e., each part of representation of a Digital Item. Note that an item without sub- the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The main Item element has two items can be considered as a logically indivisible work and an Descriptor elements, the first identifies the DI and the second item that does contain sub-items can be considered a compilation. provides metadata such as title, credits, etc. possibly expressed in The Component element defines a binding of a (multi-)media yet another description format (e.g., MPEG-7, Dublin Core). The resource to a set of descriptors which provides information related Choice element prescribes the possible sections, each having an to all or parts of the resource. These descriptors will typically identifier (select_id) and possibly further metadata using a contain control or structural information about the resource such Descriptor element. An instantiation of such a selection is referred as bit rate, character set, start points, or encryption information. to as the configuration of the Digital Item. The identifier is used A Descriptor element associates information with the enclosing by the Condition elements within the subsequent item elements in element, i.e., its parent (e.g., item) or following sibling (e.g., order to declare the relationship between the selections and the component). The information can itself be a component (e.g., sub-Items of the overall Digital Item collection. For example, the thumbnail of an image) or a textual statement (e.g., metadata such second sub-item describes the second part of the trilogy as MPEG-7 [4] or Dublin Core [5]). (require=lotr2) providing further metadata about this item, and comprises a Component element that references the actual movie A Resource element is defined as an individually identifiable asset by using the Resource element. The difference between the two such as a video, audio clip, image, or textual asset. Note that the Descriptor elements of this item is that the one at the item level resource must be locatable via an unambiguous address or directly contains descriptive information about this item (i.e., about the embedded within the Resource element. second part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) whereas the one at Digital Items are configurable through the so-called the component level provides metadata about the actual media choice/selection mechanism. A Choice element describes a set of resource. related Selection elements which can affect the configuration of a In the following we will review some adoptions of the Digital Digital Item. As such it provides a generic and flexible way for Item concept in both (other) standardization bodies and industry: multimedia content selection based on certain criteria defined by the Digital Item author. Such criteria may include rights — The first adoption of Digital Items was within the Universal expressions
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