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Greetings from the University of Utah. My software practices class has been focusing on Multi-agent Systems the entire semester. Most of us probably would have preferred a first-person shooter, but the point is to learn about debugging, writing maintainable code, optimization, and the like.

The idea behind an agent is that you create a semi-autonomous piece of software that can communicate with other agents, get information from other agents and the surrounding environment, and take actions based on that information to fulfill some set of goals. We started out creating simple agents with JADE, but once we understood the basics of the system, the Prof started us working with someone else's codebase. Cougaar seems to be a separate implementation from JADE and the ACL (Agent Communication Language), so I'm still trying to figure out the advantages/disadvantages of their system.

I was going to advise you to force images of ninjas wearing business suits and sunglasses, but the agents of the Matrix are actually a good embodiment of the ideas behind multi-agent systems. Besides, with Revolutions being released today, such advice would probably be ignored.

It hadn't occurred to me that agents could be used for logistics and resource allocation, but to me the implications are fascinating. Once this final project is done, I'm thinking I'll play with this.

For Immediate Release
CONTACT:
Lawrence Horn
MPEG LA®
301.986.6660
301.986.8575 Fax
lhorn@mpegla.com

Terms of MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License Announced

(Denver, Colorado, US - 31 January 2002) - MPEG LA, LLC today announced that it will offer fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory, worldwide access to patents that are essential to the MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) digital compression standard under a single license to be known as the MPEG-4 (Visual) Patent Portfolio License ("License"). The License currently includes patents owned by the following companies: Canon Inc.; France Télécom; Fujitsu Limited; Hitachi, Ltd.; Hyundai Curitel, Inc.; KDDI Corporation; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.; Philips Electronics; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.; Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha; Sony Corporation; Telenor AS; Toshiba Corporation; and Victor Company of Japan, Limited. MPEG LA convened these patent owners in December 2000 following an independent patent expert's finding that each of them owns one or more patents essential to the international MPEG-4 Visual Standard. The objective of the License is to include as much essential MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) intellectual property as possible in one license for the convenience of all users. Patent holders are required to include all of their essential MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) patents worldwide. In addition, new patent holders and their essential patents will continue to be added following a determination of essentiality.

"The essential patent owners are pleased that their intellectual property has made a substantial and essential contribution to the development of this exciting new technology," said MPEG LA Chief Executive Officer Baryn S. Futa. "The MPEG-4 (Visual) Patent Portfolio License manifests their desire to 'partner' with other industry participants to encourage widespread adoption of MPEG-4. The patent owners understand the risks inherent in a startup technology in which companies large and small are asked to make a pioneering investment and are sensitive to the role that their licensing model will play in that process. Therefore, the License has been specially designed so that reasonable royalties are shared fairly by a variety of industry participants in order to stimulate early, rapid and widespread MPEG-4 product investment, development, deployment and use."

Under the License terms, Licensees will pay the following royalty rates for MPEG-4 Simple or Core Products:
US $0.25 per decoder (in hardware or software) for a license to make and sell and for personal use in receiving private video (i.e., not video for which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed), subject to a cap of $1,000,000 per year/per legal entity.
US $0.25 per encoder (in hardware or software) for a license for personal use only to create private video data (i.e., not video for which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed), subject to a cap of $1,000,000 per year/per legal entity.
US $0.00033/minute or portion (equivalent to US $0.02/hour) based on playback/normal running time for every stream, download or other use of MPEG-4 video data in connection with which a service provider or content owner receives remuneration as a result of offering/providing the video for viewing or having the video viewed (including without limitation pay-per-view, subscription and advertiser/underwriter-supported services). This royalty, to be paid by entities that disseminate the MPEG-4 video data, is not subject to a cap. (In the case of MPEG-4 video for which the number of uses cannot be directly determined (e.g., video supplied as part of a basic cable service or to a transmitter for broadcasting), a surrogate (e.g., standard industry audience measurement) is under consideration.)
US $0.00033/minute or part (equivalent to US $0.02/hour) based on playback/normal running time of MPEG-4 video data encoded (for other than personal use) on each copy of packaged medium. This royalty, to be paid by the packaged medium replicator, is not subject to a cap.
For one year from the start date of the license program, parties that sign the license (or a memorandum of intent to sign a license) will be forgiven their payment of royalties for all MPEG-4 Visual Simple and Core products during and before that one year period.
The initial term of the License has not yet been finalized but when decided, will be subject to renewal on reasonable terms and conditions for the useful life of any patents in the Portfolio.

In agreeing to the foregoing terms, the patent holders considered the need for simplicity, promoting the widest possible use of MPEG-4, maximizing the opportunity for full efficient compliance with intellectual property licensing requirements and recognition of the likely business models for deploying MPEG-4 Visual Standard technology so as to assure that the License is aligned with the real-world flow of MPEG-4 commerce.
As the objective of the MPEG-4 (Visual) Patent Portfolio License is to include as much essential MPEG-4 Visual (Simple and Core) intellectual property as possible in one license, MPEG LA reiterates that any party that believes it has essential patents (Sections 9, 9.1 and 9.2 and Tables 9-1 and 9-2 of ISO\IEC 14496-2 Information Technology - Coding of Audio-Visual Objects - Part 2: Visual) and wishes to join upon successful evaluation, is invited to submit such patents to the independent Patent Evaluator together with a statement confirming its agreement with the objectives and intention to abide by terms and procedures governing the patent submission process, which may be obtained from Lawrence A. Horn, Vice President, Licensing and Business Development, MPEG LA, LLC (lhorn@mpegla.com, phone 1-301-986-6660, fax 1-301-986-8575).

# # #
Overview of the MPEG-4 Standard

MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC multi-media representation standard developed by its Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG also developed MPEG-1, which makes possible interactive video on CD-ROM and is present on virtually every personal computer, and MPEG-2, the core compression technology underlying the efficient transmission, storage and display of digitized moving images and sound tracks on which high definition television (HDTV), Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), direct broadcast by satellite (DBS), digital cable television systems, multichannel-multipoint distribution services (MMDS), personal computer video, digital versatile discs (DVD), interactive media and other forms of digital video delivery, storage, transport and display are based.

MPEG-4 is the result of yet another international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers from all over the world. Building on the successes of MPEG's earlier standards, MPEG-4 enables integration of the production, distribution and content access features of digital television, interactive graphics applications and interactive multimedia across internet protocol, wireless, low bitrate, broadcast, satellite, cable and mobile environments. With MPEG-4, all content elements can be maintained as discrete objects enabling richer interactivity and use across many different devices More information about MPEG-4 can be found at MPEG's home page http://www.cselt.it/mpeg and at the home page of the MPEG-4 Industry Forum http://www.m4if.org.

MPEG LA, LLC

MPEG LA successfully pioneered one-stop technology standards licensing, starting with a portfolio of essential patents for the international digital video compression standard known as MPEG-2, which it began licensing in 1997. One-stop technology standards licensing enables widespread technological implementation, interoperability and use of fundamental broad-based technologies covered by many patents owned by many different patent holders. MPEG LA provides users with fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to these essential patents on a worldwide basis under a single license. The MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License now has more than 360 licensees and includes more than 400 MPEG-2 essential patents in 39 countries owned by 20 patent holders. As the legal and business template for one-stop technology standards licensing, MPEG LA also provides an innovative way to achieve fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to patent rights for other technology standards - the high-speed transfer digital interconnect standard known as IEEE 1394 and the terrestrial digital television standard used in Europe and Asia known as DVB-T. In addition, MPEG LA has been asked to facilitate the development of joint licenses for other MPEG-4 technologies. The company is based in Denver, CO and has offices in Chevy Chase, MD (Washington DC metropolitan area), the greater San Francisco area and London, England. For more information, please refer to http://www.mpegla.com, http://www.dvbla.com, and http://www.1394la.com.

Specifically, the newest incarnation of DivX ;-) is compliant with MPEG-4 simple profile video. For an explanation of MPEG-4 profiles, see the MPEG 4 standard website.

Have you all - gone - completely - insane?
VRML rules the Universe, and I will explain why.

There are comments that VRML is slower than specialised game engines. Well, duh. It's a general solution, they are specific solutions. There are many things that you can do in VRML that are not possible in game engines. For example, arbitrarily large worlds. Every object being active and scriptable. In the Quake engine, it's not possible to make a door rotate on its hinge. Quake only allows for sliding doors. In VRML, of course, any object can do anything. In Quake, the largest space you can make is the size of a dance hall. In VRML, you can make a space as big as the solar system, and zoom in to a grain of sand. If you've ever tried to use a game engine, you'll know; they're great within their constraints. But those constraints are severe.

VRML is the only general, extensible solution for VR. And it happens to be an open standard, controlled by a consortium with Open Source as a core part of its platform. It's come a long way since 1997. It's integrated into MPEG4 - go to The MPEG4 spec page and do a search for "VRML". It's been extended with NURBS, geospatial capabilities, and more. It's fully scriptable with Java, ECMAScript, and whatever else you want to plug into the open source.

There are comments here that what we need is and XML language for Web3D. OK, fine, you got it. VRML has an XML encoding; it's called X3D. The old encoding still works too.

It's out there now, being used in real applications to actually do stuff with VR beyond running around in a maze shooting blocky 256-colour monsters. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

If you want to know what's actually going on now, the best source for general Web3D info is Sandy Ressler's about.com site.

If you want cool tools for VRML, go to the new kings of Web3D - ParallelGraphics. They have authoring tools for Windows, and a browser for Mac and Windows. Unfortunately they are WinTel-centric, so no Linux, and no Mac authoring. Shout at them until they come around. Nicely, of course.

If you want a visual VRML authoring tool for Windows, go to Spazz3D, the most useful tool to ever have such a stupid name.

But this is Slashdot, so here's the dirt: for the Free Software/Open Source angle, go to OpenVRML. They have a browser for all major platforms, and if you don't like it, you can fix it yourself.

MPEG stands for "Moving Pictures Experts Group" - here's the official page if you're interested: Moving Pictures Experts Group

I visited NATPE and talked to some people about HDTV and it looks like its starting to happen. Some channels are already broadcasting in japan.

But even though the HDTV consortium contains 19 formats it looks like there is an emerging universal mastering format 1080/24P 1980*1080 pixels 12 bits per channel (48 bits per pixel) 24 frames per second. (you can most likely find this resolution in your display settings). The bandwidth needed for this format is about 220 megs per second. we would need a fire wire cable capable of more then 1760 Mbit to be able to hare real-time transfer (the current fire wire is capable of 400 Mbits). The point is that HDTV is not that far away. I mean this is uncompressed!

My computer is ready for it, and so is my display, but so far there are no consumer cams out there and renting a sony HDTV cam will cost you about 1700$ a day! even though many digital still cams can take substantially higher resolution images (i guess its the bandwidth....) it is going to be interesting to see who will be first whit a consumer HDTV cam... sony? canon?

But the thing that i am waiting the most for is 12bits per pixel, its not HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) but its a lot better then 8 bits.

Now let me rant a bit about resolution :
It has taken about 15 years to get to this point (this tells you a bit about how serious tv people are about formats). And the really silly part is that a mpeg image does not have a set resolution. the resolution is just a part of the header as a "please un compress this data to this resolution" statement. So since all DTV(digital tv) will be mpeg there is no need for a fix resolution. you could in fact just broadcast the data an let the receiving tv set, unpack in in any resolution! This would also make it possible for different programs to be broadcaster in different aspects. every one seams happy whit the fact that "wide screen" is 16:9, but nothing is filmed in 16:9, most films are made in 1.85:1, 2:1, 2.1:1 or even 2.34:1 so we will still get borders on our tv sets, borders that will be broadcasted and take up bandwidth! why cant i buy a TV set whit the aspect and resolution i want and then just de-code the tv signal the way I want?

Eskil

http://www.cselt.it/leonardo/icjfiles/mpeg-4_si/9- natural_audio_paper/authors.html

While you're waiting for someone to translate the article (or redundantly post the 'fished version), amuse yourself with biographical information. The man has done much more for the digital audio field than just mp3. That said, it's much easier to get recognized when you have all those academic credentials (unlike some idiot in his twenties who puts together a buggy, centralized, mp3 server and calls it a revolution).

Because last I heard, QuickTime was the starting point for MPEG4. Check it out:

http: //w ww.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/1998/q2/980211 .pr.rel.iso.html

And...

http://www.cselt.it/ mpe g/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-4.htm#E11E10

----

According to the MPEG4 FAQ, the standard contains a Scene Description Specification in which the "...structure and scene description capabilities borrow several concepts from VRML".

MPEG4 seems to encompas a lot more than just 2-D video compression, such as scene composition, and more. See this link for more than you ever wanted to know about the MPEG-4 standard.

Where are the specs on the MP4 format? By encoding, do they mean from MPEG2 -> MP4? The "hacked" codec from M$, does anyone have it out there (source?)??

"MP4" is really called MPEG-4 Version 2. The full spec. can be found here.

MPEG-4 defines how to compress and decompress raw video into the MPEG-4 bitstream format. "Encoding" refers to the compress half of this process. If you are converting from one compression form (e.g. MPEG-2) to another (e.g. MPEG-4) you are "transcoding".

The Microsoft codec, whether hacked or not, is based on an early draft of the MPEG-4 format and is incompatible with real MPEG-4 bitstreams.

Boy, that BBC article is riddled with errors. The format is known as MPEG-4, not MP4. If you recall, MP3 is actually MPEG-1 Layer III audio encoding. MPEG-2 is a video and audio encoding format (as used on DVDs). MPEG-3 was never released. MPEG-4 is the successor video and audio compression format to MPEG II, not the successor to MP3.

DivX is not, as reported "the name of a failed technology that tried to create limited-life video cassettes", it was an attempt to create time-limit DVD discs, that's an important distinction.

The MPEG-4 standard is based on the QuickTime file format. It was only formalized in March of 2000, more than six months after the Microsoft "codec" was released. So the Microsoft "MP4" codec is an incomplete implementation of an earlier draft spec of the format and is not compatible with real MPEG-4 bitstreams. See this link for the real scoop on MPEG-4.

Open standard MPEG is defined as an open standard. The specification is available (for a fee) to everybody interested in implementing the standard. While there are a number of patents covering MPEG Audio encoding and decoding, all patent holders have declared that they will license the patents on fair and reasonable terms to everybody. No single company owns the standard. Public example source code is available to help implementers to avoid misunderstand the standards text. The format is well defined. With the exception of some incomplete implementations no problems with interoperability of equipment and software from different vendors have been reported.

MPEG4 includes audio and video of course, but it also includes much more. Here's an excerpt from the link above:

• Efficiently represent a number of data types:
• • Video from very low bitrates to very high quality conditions;
  • Music and speech data for a very wide bitrate range, from transparent music to very low bitrate speech;
  • Generic dynamic 3-D objects as well as specific objects such as human faces and bodies;
  • Speech and music to be synthesized by the decoder, including support for 3-D audio spaces;
  • Text and graphics;
• Provide, in the encoding layer, resilience to residual errors for the various data types, especially under difficult channel conditions such as mobile ones;
• Independently represent the various objects in the scene, allowing independent access for their manipulation and re-use;
• Compose audio and visual, natural and synthetic, objects into one audiovisual scene;
• Describe the objects and the events in the scene;
• Provide interaction and hyperlinking capabilities;
• Manage and protect intellectual property on audiovisual content and algorithms, so that only authorized users have access.
• Provide a delivery media independent representation format, to transparently cross the borders of different delivery environments.

In a few years, I imagine that you'll be do such cool things as generate a 3D model of your head, which you'll map onto the head of your favorite avatar model, and you'll have a character with a head that looks like you, but a body that looks like Van Damme or Lara Croft. Or some Linux guru will get ticked off at Bill {Gates, Clinton} and will render an entire video using 3D models and textures obtained from CNN. And these technologies will be based in part on what's happening now with MPEG4. Just as RealVideo is essentialy H.263, new tools will excel because of the foundation that MPEG4 is providing.

Sanpitch

Moab rocks.

MPEG-4

First off, 128 kbit/s encoding is good enough for a lot of applications. I just think that it's not good enough for music that you want to own. I don't claim that 128 kbit/s encoded music is easy to distinguish from the original. It isn't. But it is possible to distinguish the two. See this paper for results of professional listening tests. MP3 at 128 kbit/s consistently scored at the "perceptible differences" level.

Of course, I realize that professional listening tests is quite different from you listening to music in your home. If you think the differences don't matter, then fine. But please at least experience the differences firsthand before judging whether they matter or not. I have personally done several A/B listening tests with music that I actually listen to, and I've decided that the difference does matter to me.

So go out, find some music that you're intimately familiar with, encode it at various bitrates, and do A/B listening tests. Hear out the differences and see if they matter to you. If not, then feel free to go out and say that the differences don't matter. But please don't say the differences don't matter because you can't hear them, because that's just admitting your ears aren't good enough to back up your opinion.

Finally, Robin Whittle's comparison of mp3, aac, and vqf discusses all the issues with digital audio and compression, and hits all the correct answers. It's a must read if you care at all about your digital or compressed music.