Optical Storage Symposium 2007
Set for September 18-19
in San Francisco

The Optical Storage Technology Association will hold its sixth annual OpticalStorage Symposium on Sept. 19, 2007, from 8:30am to 5:00pm at the Embassy Suites Hotel in South San Francisco, California. This year’s event, which carries the theme “Perspectives and Prospects for Optical Storage,” will also include a New Technology Venue and Opening Reception on Sept. 18, from 5pm to 8pm, following the regularly scheduled OSTA quarterly meetings on Sept. 17 and 18. A UDF Plugfest will also be held on Sept. 18 and 19 and a training seminar on implementing the EVERPLAY™ specification is planned for the afternoon of Sept. 18.

For the New Technology Venue, companies with optical RAID systems, holographic storage products and other advanced technology or future storage solutions still under development are encouraged to exhibit their products and technologies.

OSTA is currently finalizing the conference sessions, which will address the following industry trends and issues:

• MarketWatch: Industry Leaders, Conversations and Perspectives
• Optical Disc Archive Testing
• Commercial Optical Storage Archiving for critical applications
• Achieving Compatibility Across CE Devices with the EVERPLAY specification
• New Technology Highlights

These sessions, along with opportunities to see the industry’s latest technology in the New Technology Venue, are expected to draw decision makers from the optical storage, PC and consumer electronics industries.

To register for this year’s Optical Storage Symposium, arrange to show new or breakthrough technologies at the New Technology Venue, or obtain additional information on the conference, please contact Debbie Maguire at debbieosta.org, or visit our Web site at http://www.osta.org. Sponsorship and exhibit opportunities are available.

 

New Photo Backup Information Website Coming Soon!

 

 

The next UDF Plugfest will be held Sept. 18 & 19, following the UDF Committee meeting on Sept. 17.

Photo Backup Roundtable

OSTA’s Photo Backup Roundtable members are continuing their efforts to educate consumers on the importance of digital photo backup, and encourage development of easy-to-use photo backup solutions. Participants include representatives of PC and camera manufacturers, as well as optical storage software, writer and media businesses.

The group is developing an outreach program to both industry and consumers, and plans to create a website with information on the importance of backing up to preserve irreplaceable photos and offer tips on how to do so easily. Additional plans include building awareness of the ODAT spec, which will be available in the near future, to encourage use of archival grade media for long-term storage. The group is also in discussion with software manufacturers to encourage development of backup solutions that will perform scheduled scans of users’ hard disk drives to identify jpgs or other files that haven’t been backed up, creation of a reference list so subsequent scans are only incremental, and continue to prompt users to regularly back up their photos. At the June meeting, the group will review proposals for development of the educational website.

PMA figures estimate that 20 billion digital images were taken in 2005 and a cumulative 55 billion digital images since 2000. Of this more than two-thirds have not been printed and are likely to reside on an end-users’ PC hard disk drive. An article from storagereview.com notes, "The service life of a modern hard disk is usually about three to five years." While it is unclear what percentage of end-users are backing up their digital images, it is clear that for those who aren’t, there is a significant risk of losing unprotected photos when a hard disk drive fails, especially if there is no printed copy of these photos.

---

Next OSTA Quarterly Meeting:
June 11 - 13, 2007

The next OSTA quarterly meeting will be held June 11 - 13, 2007, at the Embassy Suites in South San Francisco, California.  To RSVP and make arrangements to attend, please contact Debbie Maguire at debbie@osta.org.  A detailed schedule for the MPV™, UDF, COSA, DVD Compatibility Committee meetings and Photo Backup Roundtable can be found at http://www.osta.org/meetings/index.htm, along with information on room reservations.   We look forward to seeing you there.

 

ODAT WG2
OSTA and its ODAT business promotion working group WG2 are focusing on programs intended to create infrastructure and education to support the technical specification

 

 

 

 

 

 

OSTA and Ecma International Join Forces to Fast-Track ISO Standard

 

Optical Disc Archival Testing Standard
Progressing on Schedule

Significant progress has been made at Ecma toward finalizing the industry-wide archival-grade optical disc testing standard.

To recap the progress, ODAT’s technical committee, comprised of global manufacturers of optical media and drives, as well as university and government members, created the initial draft standard that was accepted for consideration by the Ecma TC31 committee at its meeting in Sapporo, Japan in June 2006.  Since then, the Ecma technical editing team headed by Chris Smith, director of Sony Corporation’s Data Media Business Development Center in Boulder, Colorado, has completed the final document which was approved by Ecma’s TC31 committee in April 2007.   The Ecma General Assembly will vote on the standard at its upcoming June meeting.  If accepted by the General Assembly, the standard will be forwarded to ISO for consideration there.  We will continue to update you on the progress of these approvals.

Meanwhile, OSTA’s ODAT Committee continues to address the business promotion aspects of the archive test specification. It is believed that the existence of standards based archival grade media will enhance customers’ ability to make informed purchases decisions.

At the March 2006 meeting, the ODAT committee discussed options for a certified media logo and licensing program and OSTA’s potential role in promoting the new standard and working with verification laboratories that certify media archival life.

At the upcoming ODAT WG2 meeting scheduled on June 11, 2007, in South San Francisco, the group will continue discussions regarding the implementation program, certification lab development, OSTA website updates, and preparation for an archival disc session at the upcoming Optical Storage Symposium in September.   We hope all interested members can join us at that meeting.

---

OSTA To Administer EVERPLAY™ Standard
OSTA to Manage EVERPLAY Specification for Interchange of Digital Photos, Video and Related Audio Files Across CE Devices

Eastman Kodak, FUJIFILM Corporation and Konica Minolta Photo Imaging Inc., founders and owners of the EVERPLAY™ specification, selected OSTA for ongoing administration and future development of the EVERPLAY image interoperability specification. The EVERPLAY specification is designed to ensure compatibility of digital photos and videos across a broad range of consumer products for future generations. In late Feb., OSTA and the Everplay founders announced an initial memorandum of understanding regarding this agreement. The final agreement is expected soon.

ISO approval of industry-wide, optical disc archival grade testing specification anticipated in July 2007

Watch for details on a training seminar on implementing EVERPLAY, planned for Sept. 18 in SF

The next OSTA meeting on EVERPLAY will be June 11th as part of the MPV™ Committee meeting. The focus of the June MPV meeting will be on the MPV Print Profile and EVERPLAY.

 

Methods to organize and preserve digital images have evolved independently by many different companies and have lost interoperability among different manufacturers systems. There are also potential playback problems as time passes, systems evolve and formats change. The EVERPLAY specification aims to resolve these issues and respond to consumers’ needs to protect images and enjoy widespread interoperability. The specification is designed to make it easy to implement in products and services and uses next-generation XML language to guarantee interoperability.

When the EVERPLAY specification was finalized in February of 2006, Kodak, Fujifilm and Konica Minolta initiated a royalty-free license program and urged widespread adoption by companies throughout the consumer digital imaging industry, as well as the consumer electronics, software, photo and image processing industries. By signing the licensing agreement, which is available on the EVERPLAY website (www.everplay-spec.org), any company can acquire a royalty-free license to implement the specification, use the trademarks and obtain rights to the patents owned by the EVERPLAY founders. In addition, a software development kit (SDK) v.1.10 and verifying tool v1.10 are available at no cost. OSTA will now manage the administration, licensing and future development of the EVERPLAY brand and specification.

The original Picture Archiving and Sharing Standard (PASS), which was the name of the project to develop the EVERPLAY specification, was awarded the prestigious Best Technology in Europe 2005 Award at the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) European Photo & Imaging Awards 2005.

“The EVERPLAY founders agree that it is time to transfer the standard to an established trade association to manage ongoing administration and engage a more open standards process to further promote its adoption,” said Frank M. Ranalletti, Director, Technology Initiatives, Digital & Film Imaging Systems, for Eastman Kodak. “OSTA has a long history of creating and promoting widely-adopted compatibility specifications including the MultiPlay specification for CDs and DVDs and the Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system. The EVERPLAY standard is based on OSTA’s MPV™ (MusicPhotoVideo) core technology for exchanging and playing collections of digital music, photos, and videos among consumer electronics devices, various storage media and across the Internet. As a result, we felt that OSTA was best suited for the task.”

“We are very pleased that OSTA has been selected to advance the EVERPLAY specification and promote its adoption as an international standard,” said David Bunzel, OSTA president. “It offers excellent interoperability benefits to the imaging industry, and has great potential beyond imaging to facilitate storage, search, exchange, printing and playback of consumer data, with the recognition and organization of the images or content available across multiple devices.”

Under terms of the agreement between the EVERPLAY founders and OSTA, the specification will be administered as a working group within OSTA. The EVERPLAY specification and trademarks will continue to be licensed freely to products and services that are compatible with the EVERPLAY standard. OSTA will maintain the everplay-spec.org website.

 

OSTA
19925 Stevens Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014
USA




David Bunzel
President
(408) 253-3695
(408) 253-9938 FAX
dbunzel@osta.org

Visit OSTA on the
Web at www.osta.org

Newsletter Editor
Jan Johnson
MultiPath
Communications
jan@multipathcom.com

 

• 
  
  On The Horizon
  By David Bunzel, President
  
  

  We’re pleased to announced plans for our sixth annual Optical Storage Symposium and the New Technology Forum that will be held in conjunction with it. We hope some of you can join us there; if not, please watch the website afterwards to see key presentations from the symposium.

• Today, OSTA has multiple activities underway to address the critical issues of data interchangeability and archiving. We are moving forward to integrate ongoing management of the EVERPLAY specification into our MPV Committee activities. As this specification becomes widely adopted, we expect to see significant benefits for consumers in terms of digital image portability among various CE devices. On the archive front, OSTA is continuing to address ways to help educate consumers that optical discs are a convenient, affordable solution for storing photos and other data that provides safe, long-term storage and are easily transportable in the event of a disaster. Our ODAT Committee has also been working on next stops to educate business and consumer end-users on the pending industry-wide specification for an archival-grade optical disc specification. We believe these and other OSTA activities are making an important contribution to the industry.

• We welcome any feedback you may have on this newsletter, and encourage interested industry participants to attend our next quarterly meeting. For more information on membership, visit our website at www.osta.org or contact Debbie Maguire, OSTA Administrator, at (408) 253-3695, or by e-mail at debbieosta.org.

• Warmest regards,
  David Bunzel
  OSTA President