Editing MPEG-7

{{Short description|Video encoding standard}}
'''MPEG-7''' is a [[multimedia]] [[Content (media and publishing)|content]] description [[standardization|standard]]. It was standardized in [[International Organization for Standardization|ISO]]/[[International Electrotechnical Commission|IEC]] 15938 (Multimedia content description interface).<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.iso.org/standard/34228.html | title=ISO/IEC 15938-1:2002 - Information technology -- Multimedia content description interface -- Part 1: Systems | author=ISO | access-date=2009-10-31}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/achievements.htm |title=About MPEG - Achievements |author=MPEG |publisher=chiariglione.org |access-date=2009-10-31 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080708183405/http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/achievements.htm |archive-date=July 8, 2008 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/terms_of_reference.htm |title=Terms of Reference |author=MPEG |publisher=chiariglione.org |access-date=2009-10-31 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100221015538/http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/terms_of_reference.htm |archive-date=February 21, 2010 }}</ref><ref name="mpeg-standards">{{cite web|url=http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards.htm |title=MPEG standards - Full list of standards developed or under development |author=MPEG |publisher=chiariglione.org |access-date=2009-10-31 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100420192552/http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards.htm |archive-date=April 20, 2010 }}</ref> This description will be associated with the content itself, to allow fast and efficient searching for material that is of interest to the user. MPEG-7 is formally called ''Multimedia Content Description Interface''. Thus, it is ''not'' a standard which deals with the actual encoding of moving pictures and audio, like [[MPEG-1]], [[MPEG-2]] and [[MPEG-4]]. It uses [[XML]] to store [[Metadata (computing)|metadata]], and can be attached to [[timecode]] in order to tag particular events, or [[synchronise]] [[lyrics]] to a [[song]], for example.

It was designed to standardize:
* a set of Description Schemes ("DS") and Descriptors ("D")
* a language to specify these schemes, called the [[Description Definition Language]] ("DDL")
* a scheme for coding the description

The combination of [[MPEG-4]] and MPEG-7 has been sometimes referred to as [[MPEG-47]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.networkdictionary.com/protocols/m.php |title=Complete Protocol dictionary, glossary and reference - M |author=NetworkDictionary |access-date=2009-12-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100101222717/http://networkdictionary.com/protocols/m.php |archive-date=2010-01-01 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==Introduction==

MPEG-7 is intended to complement the previous [[MPEG]] standards, by standardizing multimedia metadata -- information about the content, not the content itself.  MPEG-7 can be used independently of the other MPEG standards - the description might even be attached to an analog movie. The representation that is defined within MPEG-4, i.e. the representation of audio-visual data in terms of objects, is however very well suited to what will be built on the MPEG-7 standard. This representation is basic to the process of categorization. In addition, MPEG-7 descriptions could be used to improve the functionality of previous MPEG standards. With these tools, we can build an MPEG-7 Description and deploy it. According to the requirements document,1 "a Description consists of a Description Scheme (structure) and the
set of Descriptor Values (instantiations) that
describe the Data." A Descriptor Value is "an instantiation of a Descriptor for a given data set (or subset thereof)."
The Descriptor is the syntactic and semantic definition of the content.
Extraction algorithms are inside the scope of the standard because their standardization is not required to allow interoperability.

==Parts==
The MPEG-7 (ISO/IEC 15938) consists of different Parts. Each part covers a certain aspect of the whole specification.
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="100%"
|+MPEG-7 Parts<ref name="mpeg-standards" /><ref name="jtc1-sc29">{{cite web|url=http://kikaku.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/29w42911.htm#MPEG-7 |title=MPEG-7 (Multimedia content description interface) |author=ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 |date=2009-10-30 |access-date=2009-11-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131231054907/http://kikaku.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/29w42911.htm |archive-date=2013-12-31 }}</ref>
|-
! width="8%" | Part
! width="15%" | Number
! width="8%" | First public release date (First edition)
! width="8%" | Latest public release date (edition)
! width="8%" | Latest amendment
! width="30%" | Title
! Description
|-
| Part 1 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/34228.html ISO/IEC 15938-1] 
| 2002
| 2002
| 2006
| Systems 
| the architectural framework of MPEG-7, the carriage of MPEG-7 content - TeM (Textual format for MPEG-7) and the binary format for MPEG-7 descriptions ([[BiM]])<ref>{{cite web | url=http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-7/mpeg-7.htm | title=MPEG-7 Overview (version 10) | author=ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 | publisher=chiariglione.org | date=October 2004 | access-date=2009-11-01}}</ref>
|-
| Part 2 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/34229.html ISO/IEC 15938-2] 
| 2002
| 2002
| 
| Description definition language 
| 
|-
| Part 3 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/34230.html ISO/IEC 15938-3] 
| 2002
| 2002
| 2010
| Visual
| 
|-
| Part 4 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/34231.html ISO/IEC 15938-4] 
| 2002
| 2002
| 2006
| Audio
| 
|-
| Part 5 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/34232.html ISO/IEC 15938-5] 
| 2003
| 2003
| 2015
| Multimedia description schemes
| 
|-
| Part 6 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/35364.html ISO/IEC 15938-6] 
| 2003
| 2003
| 2011
| Reference software
| 
|-
| Part 7 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/35365.html ISO/IEC 15938-7] 
| 2003
| 2003
| 2011
| Conformance testing
| 
|-
| Part 8 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/37778.html ISO/IEC TR 15938-8] 
| 2002
| 2002
| 2011
| Extraction and use of MPEG-7 descriptions
| 
|-
| Part 9 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/40392.html ISO/IEC 15938-9] 
| 2005
| 2005
| 2012
| Profiles and levels
| 
|-
| Part 10 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/40527.html ISO/IEC 15938-10] 
| 2005
| 2005
| 
| Schema definition
| 
|-
| Part 11 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/42114.html ISO/IEC TR 15938-11] 
| 2005
| 2005
| 2012
| MPEG-7 profile schemas
| 
|-
| Part 12 
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/61195.html ISO/IEC 15938-12] 
| 2008
| 2012
| 
| Query format
| 
|-
| Part 13
| [https://www.iso.org/standard/65393.html ISO/IEC 15938-13]
| 2015
| 2015
| 
| Compact descriptors for visual search
| 
|}

==Relation between description and content==
[[File:Mpeg7image1.svg|thumb|350px|right|Independence between description and content]]
An MPEG-7 architecture requirement is that '''description must be separate from the audiovisual content'''.

On the other hand, there must be a '''relation between the content and description'''. Thus the description is multiplexed with the content itself.

On the right side you can see this relation between description and content.

==MPEG-7 tools==
[[File:Mpeg7image2.svg|thumb|right|350px|Relation between different tools and elaboration process of MPEG-7]]

MPEG-7 uses the following tools:

* '''Descriptor (D):''' It is a representation of a feature defined syntactically and semantically. It could be that a unique object was described by several descriptors.
* '''Description Schemes (DS):''' Specify the structure and semantics of the relations between its components, these components can be descriptors (D) or description schemes (DS).
* '''[[Description Definition Language]] (DDL):''' It is based on XML language used to define the structural relations between descriptors. It allows the creation and modification of description schemes and also the creation of new descriptors (D).
* '''System tools:''' These tools deal with binarization, synchronization, transport and storage of descriptors. It also deals with [[Intellectual Property]] protection.

On the right side you can see the relation between MPEG-7 tools.

==MPEG-7 applications==
There are many applications and application domains which will benefit from the MPEG-7 standard. A few application examples are:

* [[Digital library]]: Image/video catalogue, musical dictionary. 
* Multimedia directory services: e.g. yellow pages. 
* Broadcast media selection: Radio channel, TV channel. 
* Multimedia editing: Personalized electronic news service, media authoring.
* Security services: Traffic control, production chains...
* E-business: Searching process of products.
* Cultural services: Art-galleries, museums...
* Educational applications.
* Biomedical applications.
* [[Artificial_intelligence|Intelligent multimedia applications]] that leverage low-level multimedia [[Semantics_(computer_science)|semantics]] via [[Knowledge representation and reasoning|formal representation and automated reasoning]].<ref>
{{cite web |url=http://mpeg7.org/ |title=MPEG-7 Ontology | access-date=29 June 2017}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Exif]]
* [[ID3]]
* [[Metadata standards]]
* [[MPEG-4 Part 11]] – Scene description and application engine
* [[Multimedia information retrieval]]
* [[Query by humming]]

==Limitations==

The MPEG-7 standard was originally written in [[XML Schema (W3C)|XML Schema]] (XSD), which constitutes [[semi-structured data]]. For example, the running time of a movie annotated using MPEG-7 in [[XML]] is [[machine-readable data]], so software agents will know that the number expressing the running time is a positive integer, but such data is not machine-interpretable (cannot be understood by agents), because it does not convey [[semantics]] (meaning), known as the "[[Semantic gap|Semantic Gap]]." To address this issue, there were many attempts to map the MPEG-7 [[XML Schema (W3C)|XML Schema]] to the [[Web Ontology Language]] (OWL), which is a [[structured data]] equivalent of the terms of the MPEG-7 standard (MPEG-7Ontos, COMM, SWIntO, etc.). However, these mappings did not really bridge the "[[Semantic gap|Semantic Gap]]," because [[Feature extraction#Low-level|low-level video features]] alone are inadequate for representing video semantics.<ref name="SikosPowers2015">{{cite book|last1=Sikos|first1=Leslie F.|last2=Powers|first2=David M.W.|title=Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Exploiting Semantic Annotations in Information Retrieval |chapter=Knowledge-Driven Video Information Retrieval with LOD|year=2015|pages=35–37|doi=10.1145/2810133.2810141|isbn=9781450337908 |s2cid=16544890 |url=https://unisa.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/view/delivery/61USOUTHAUS_INST/12165439490001831 }}</ref> In other words, annotating an automatically extracted video feature, such as color distribution, does not provide the meaning of the actual visual content.<ref name="BollKlasSheth1998">{{cite book |last1=Boll |first1=Susanne |last2=Klas |first2=Wolfgang |last3=Sheth |first3=Amit |chapter=Overview on Using Metadata to Manage Multimedia Data |date=1998 |title=Using Metadata to Integrate and Apply Digital Media |publisher=McGraw-Hill |page=[https://archive.org/details/multimediadatama0000unse/page/3 3] |isbn=978-0070577350 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/multimediadatama0000unse/page/3 }}</ref>

==Compare==
* [[Material Exchange Format]] (MXF), a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by [[SMPTE]].

==References==
* B.S. Manjunath (Editor), Philippe Salembier (Editor), and Thomas Sikora (Editor): Introduction to MPEG-7: Multimedia Content Description Interface. Wiley & Sons, April 2002 - {{ISBN|0-471-48678-7}}
* Harald Kosch: Distributed Multimedia Database Technologies Supported by MPEG-7 and MPEG-21. CRC Press, January 2004 - {{ISBN|0-8493-1854-8}}
* Giorgos Stamou (Editor) and Stefanos Kollias (Editor): Multimedia Content and the Semantic Web: Standards, Methods and Tools. Wiley & Sons, May 2005 - {{ISBN|0-470-85753-6}}
* Hyoung-Gook Kim, Nicolas Moreau, and Thomas Sikora: MPEG-7 Audio and Beyond: Audio Content Indexing and Retrieval. Wiley & Sons, October 2005 - {{ISBN|0-470-09334-X}}
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-7/mpeg-7.htm MPEG-7 Overview]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20170930084356/http://www.multimedia-metadata.info/ MPEG-7/-21 Community Portal]

{{MPEG}}
{{Compression formats}}
{{List of IEC standards}}

[[Category:MPEG]]
[[Category:Digital container formats]]
[[Category:ISO/IEC standards]]
[[Category:Metadata standards]]