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OSTA Announces MultiPhoto/Video Specification
krazyninja writes "The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), and the International Imaging Industry Association (I3A), have announced the release of v1.0 MultiPhoto/Video specs. This specifies a standard framework for storing and managing digital image content on CDs/DVDs. Companies such as HP and Roxio are involved in this development. Note that there is a similar spec for audio called MultiAudio, also from OSTA."
If microsoft doesnt support this, or it doesnt get supported by winamp, it will end up falling by the wayside. Who needs another crappy video codec when we have mpg?
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
MPEG is severly dated, in my opinion, when we have stuff that can produce great quality at low bitrates. And, hell, this is an upstart isn't it? What kind've of open mind would say that we shouldn't even try and look into/make? another codec and blindly follow whatever preconcieved notions we have.
something needs to be..
My mother, gave my sister, the family foto album.. now I have it, and I'm in the process of digitizing it...
all of my kids, will have copies (albeit digital) and with video clips, and with audio snippets... and their children (presumably) will, and so on.. how about a standard, that saves these scrapbooks, so they can be merged easily..
Fictionalized example- I use kodaks 'scraps' program, and give my son a 500 gig optical disk with everything.. he meets and marries in due time a woman who's family chose to use polaroids 'memories' they buy one or the other, and just 'merge' the memories.. they can hand each child a copy issued custom to them.. with added material.. (lables for photos now say great grandparent in stead of grandparent, et'cetera..)
of course, it has to be open format, something that allows new technologies to add gracefully (a hologram or other 3-d memory)
What kind of DRM nasties are in this? And what are the odds that this new format will run only on CD/DVD players powered by Windows Media and Windows XP for Home Appliances Edition? They will copy protect your own photos for you, just in case you might happen to take a picture of a copy protected work somewhere. You wont be sending those photos off to your brother or sister unless you pay your monthly $19.95 Multiphoto Subscriber Plus+ license (but it works with broadband and AOL!).
I smell trouble. I smell lots of trouble. Whenever companies like HP and Roxio get involved, I am concerned for the well being of embedded, appliance-like devices.
Distopian future? Absolutely. Soon we wont be able to print our own photos without a watermark of the printers manufacturer. Free advertising! And it will be against DMCA to remove the watermarks! What a joyus future indeed!
OSTA! == Buy!
Scary when you think about it.
In dream society, people could be given the ability to mod replies. In real life, it would be disaster.
Why not just use UDF packet-written CDs? What advantage does this new, properietary, probably DRMed format have over good ol' UDF with a load of .jpeg and .mpeg files?
P.S. I wish Linux UDF-write support worked - then I could start using CDs as giant floppies...
Seriously, I've read most of the links now on the OSTA site, and I can't see anything that looks like DRM.
/.
Repeatedly all I can find is that this is hardware/OS independant, and that non 'MPV-aware' software/hardware will still play the media because its just an extension system, that it is royalty-free...
So what is this - well this is my interpretation:
This is a index and archiving approach, using XML as a metadata format to support the approach.
Currently on a CD/DVD you have the ISO9660 filesystem that tells the firmware/software the bare minimum to access the data.
MPV looks like it takes this a step further, similar to what Kodak did with the PhotoCD standard, so that aware applications can get access to a fast loading and more descriprive index of the media on the disk.
So its an evolution of the filesystem that supports media content rather than raw data files.
I don't see that it mandates a particular underlying file system, or file format, or DRM, or brand of hardware.
Its just a standard to provide and index so that 'MPV aware' software/hardware can understand the media better and do more with it. If you're not MPV aware - then you just get the data in the filesystem like you do today.
Now if you've ever tried to use something like Uleads Photo Explorer to find the image you want off your CD-R archive and waited whilst the drive thrashed through the whole 700MB to generate thumbnails, or tried to use WinOnCD to generate CD PhotoAlbums by a neat use of the VCD standards - then you will know that this is possible, but not the easiest it should be.
How much nicer would it be just to dump your images onto media with some notes and categories, and for it to just work, in your PC, on your folks DVD player, in your mates IMac, heck even your local tame guru's *NIX boxen?
And I'm a lot happier seeing this done by an organisation with a broad range of interests, software, hardware, industry, consumers etc. I don't want OS forcing this on me with thier own agenda - M$ or *NIX - I don't want Media Industry influenced hardware companies like Sony utting thier own spin on it.
If this is to succeed then it needs contributions from a wide range of sources, that will keep it balanced and open. Look at how common HTML has become under the care of the W3C - and it still by and large resists customisation and bending towards specific views because so many diverse interests are part of the process.
Lets not view every technology announcement as a modern day 'REDs under the BED'('DRM under the HOOD??') paranoia - yes lets keep our eyes out, and when we are worried DO SOMETHING rather than rant. But lets not let the actions of RIAA/Fritz/M$/MPAA et al colour our views of every new announcement - that way they win. Lets remember that spirit of 'gosh wow' that drove the early internet and gave us
I'm prepared to be wrong, but to paraphrase 'To a hammer every problem is a nail' lets not end up as 'To the slashdot community every announcement has hidden DRM'
From a quick look at the spec, this is a metadata format, not a filesystem. It's intended for more than CD/DVD media as well, notably flash filesystems, which are different of technical necessity.
It seems to be mostly oriented toward labelling, describing and presenting collections of images. For what a first look is worth it doesn't necessarily suck, either. They mention dublin core metadata.
A nice add on to comments in the jpeg header, anyway.
You misunderstand. This is a format for the metadata and layout. Metadata such as structural metadata, linking one image to another (say, to describe formally that images 1-100.jpg are a sequence of stills from a video, and that 101-200.jpg are thumbnails of same) or technical metadata about the image creation/capture process (and a whoooole lot more which I won't even start on).
This stuff is important, complex and probably not for 99% of the Slashdot crowd. We (at a national copyright library) are using METS (Metdata Encoding and Transmission Standard) as metadata on our digital objects, and METS has an extension schema for AV stuff, which seems to be similar to this.
How much will we have to pay to use this standard and how many restrictions will it place on how our software works ? (I.e. can we decide not to implement a part of it we don't want ? (DRM))
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Here's a practical start. Check out igal, which generates and publishs an entire online picture show (HTML slides, thumbnails and index page included) with just one command line invocation. HTML is open and easy to parse, not to mention edit by hand to add those custom touches. You can build your classes of relationships external to the archive itself to merge things as you wish or simply make new indexes to the images.
I'm crurrently building html indexes of my files. It's easy enough to put friends and family into seperate directories then family names in seperate directories under family then link events by hand elsewhere. Such segmentation helps at archive time and adding to it is as easy as dropping a new directory. Good organization makes itself felt in any media, paper or digital.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wonder if this means the end to Cat-Photo... although Cat-Photo still has some advantages to MPV - especially simplicity.
http://cat-photo.sourceforge.net/
Dybdahl.
no, this is not a new CD/DVD format. Its about a file that gets added to an existing iso/udf formatted disk to point to the pictures, the metadata, the different resolution versions of the pictures, the music to go with it all.
then the player: your DVD player, your linux app, reads this and acts on it.
No DRM, no new royalty fees, nothing. This format is to set your home photos free, forever.