MPV Advances in 2005 Featured at Interoperability Seminar in Tokyo

High level of interest in MPV Interoperability Specification and implementing MPV in CE devices

To encourage MPV adoption and promote the anticipated release of the MPV Interoperability Specification (MPV-IS), OSTA’s MPV Committee held a seminar in Tokyo in October to provide companies the tools and information needed to implement MPV in digital cameras, consumer electronics products (including music, photo, and video players and recorders) and PC photo software applications. The event was hosted by Olympus Corporation and Seiko Epson Corporation.

The seminar was well attended by companies representing 90 percent of the imaging industry. Participants from leading global companies represented a diverse range of industry segments, including digital cameras, inkjet photo printers, 4” x 6” die sublimation printers, photo service organizations, and optical recording software and hardware, as well the photo industry media.

Speakers at the event (shown left to right) included Peter Rae, SAI; Pieter van Zee, HP; Fumio Nagasaka, Epson; Dick Thompson, Thompson Consulting Services/HP; Felix Nemirovsky, Chuba Consulting, and MPV Committee Chairman; SK Shin, Samsung; and Kenji Ichimura, Olympus.

Attendees were updated on the advances to the MPV specifications in 2005, and learned how to implement the OSTA-developed MPV Interoperability Specifications for PC and CE products. The training was conducted by the authors of the MPV specifications and experienced implementers. Information was also provided on important new initiatives to extend the MPV specifications to provide additional capabilities for digital cameras, photo printers and kiosks, as well as music sharing over home networks, and photo archiving.

MPV is an open standard,
extensible, and no per-unit
royalty is charged for the
use of the specifications
from OSTA.


The objective of the MPV
Interoperability Specification
is to make consistent MPV
playlist writing, reading and
playback to ensure
interoperability between
devices that conform to
the specification.


The MPV specifications
can be found at
http://www.osta.org/mpv


For more information,
the MPV White Paper is
available on the OSTA
website at:


http://www.osta.org/mpv/
public/documents/technolog
y/MPV- Whitepaper-July-2005.pdf

MPV is a media management solution for the interchange of media collections. Today, consumers are creating and managing large “collections” of digital Music, Photo, and Video content. Creating playlists and associations between these different types of digital content enhances sharing and enjoyment of life experiences. However, all too often, the “metadata” that manages the playback of these collections is lost when transferring content and there is no industry standard method for insuring interoperability between diverse capture and playback devices. Without MPV, DVD-R and CD-R playback on DVD players is often difficult to navigate, with truncated file names, lengthy disc start-up and no metadata to provide captions, date, time, music genre, duration, etc. MPV enabled products provide consistent and easy navigation with rapid start-up, with rich metadata-enabled supporting information.

Many of today's leading consumer electronics and PC software companies are already introducing products using MPV, and are beginning to implement MPV-IS, a specification aimed at collection management, access, and interoperability for consumer electronics devices.

The seminar included an overview of OSTA and the MPV Specification, with a review of the MPV Core, Basic, Presentation, and Music Profiles, and explanation of MPV SDK. The afternoon sessions focused on MPV-IS, with a technical overview of MPV-IS v1.0, and discussion of the MPV Logo Licensing Program and MPV Validation/Compatibility Tools. A review of MPV Profile Working Group activities for the Camera Profile, Portable Storage Profile and Print Profile concluded the sessions.

The presentations from the seminar are available for download from the OSTA website at http://www.osta.org/mpv/public/seminar2000.htm

Presentations included in the downloadable zip file include:

• MPV Introduction -
• MPV Technology Overview (open specification, website, licensing program, compliance plan and test tools, third party SDK’s, and more.)
• MPV Interoperability Specification
• MPV Licensing
• Validation Tools (ValidateMPV!)
• Broadcast TV Specification Profile
• Digital Still Camera Profile
• Portable Storage Profile
• Print Profile
• Seminar Summary

ValidateMPV! is the first third party validation tool for MPV-IS, and enables fast and easy self-validation testing for compliance with the specification. Companies that successfully pass the validation tests may license the MPV trademarks.




Written in C++,
ValidateMPV!
reads the XML play list
filesto be tested, refers to
each MPV-IS requirement,
and outputs a detailed
report.
_____________________








OSTA’s MPV
Chairman, Felix
Nemirovsky, will
moderate a panel,

Unlocking Consumers
Digital Images and
Video at the

The Digital Living Room conference

December 5-6, 2005
Crowne Plaza
Foster City, CA

For info, visit
http://www.digitallivingroom
.com/December.htm

ValidateMPV!™ MPV-IS Validation Tool Now Available for Beta Testing

ValidateMPV!, a validation tool for the MPV Interoperability Specification is in the final stages of beta testing, and is expected to be approved by the MPV Committee at the upcoming December quarterly meeting.

ValidateMPV! is the first third party self-validation test tool to verify MPV-IS compatibility of a specific product and its compliance with the OSTA spec, which fulfill the requirements to license the MPV logo. The software tool supports the current version of the MPV IS, as well as Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional and Windows 2003 Server operating systems.

The completion and release of the MPV-IS is a significant development for companies that have been looking for enhanced interoperability between devices that capture digital media content and playback devices that need a simple, fast, and easy way for consumers to quickly view, navigate, and share their digital media collections.

To insure interoperability between capture devices (“writers”) and playback devices (“readers”), the MPV-IS defines certain guidelines for implementation of MPV in a consistent manner on all consumer electronics devices, including those with limited performance or memory. The guidelines provide a list of Do’s and Don’ts that must be implemented in each product. The current MPV-IS v1.0 supports the MPV Basic, Presentation, and Music Profiles.

Companies wishing to release products compatible with the MPV-IS must successfully complete a certification process comprised of 1) passing validation tests and 2) sending the positive results along with an administrative fee to OSTA’s Licensing Administrator.

Companies that successfully implement the MPV-IS and pass the validation tests may license the MPV trademarks. Use of the MPV trademarks on products and their accompanying marketing material will provide a powerful visual indicator and recognition of interoperability between devices for collections of digital media content

ValidateMPV! tests each MPV IS requirement, and automatically outputs a detailed report. For technical details, visit http://www.osta.org/mpv to download the presentations from the MPV IS seminar held in Tokyo in October. Presentation #5 addresses ValidateMPV! For more information, in North America, contact Lee Prewitt, SAI, via email at leep@softarch.com, or in Asia, contact Peter Rae, SAI, at peterr@softarch.com.

As they become available, additional third party validation tools will be listed at http://www.osta.org/mpv/licensing/validationtools.htm.

Plugfest Agenda:

8:30am
– Coffee/ networking

9:00-10:00am
- Test Plan and Test
Data Review
- Procedure Review

10:30-noon
– First Group of
Testing

Noon
- Lunch (in dining room)
1:15 -3:45pm
– Second Group of Testing

3:45-4:00pm – Break

4:00-5:00pm
– Wrap-up, PlugFest
Summary

MPV Quarterly Meeting to include Plugfest
Products with any level of MPV Implementation Welcome

OSTA’s MPV Committee has a full two-day agenda for the upcoming quarterly meetings on Dec. 5 and 6. The first day includes the traditional Committee and Sub-committee meetings, while the second day will be devoted to an MPV Plugfest. Participation is open to any company with any level of MPV implementation, including released and un-released products, full or partial implementation of MPV specifications, and compliance or non-compliance with MPV-IS, the MPV Interoperability Specification. Based on initial responses, we expect representation in a wide range of product categories including Digital Camera, Media Player, DC/DVD Player/Recorder, Photo Storage Devices, and PC Multimedia Software.

Materials provided to participants will include the MPV-IS Test Plan, MPV-IS Writer “gold” data set, SAI ValidateMPV! validation tools, MPV-IS Reader Test Plan and MPV-IS Reader test data set

For details on the Test Plan, test data and Plugfest procedure documents, or to RSVP to participate in the Plugfest, please contact MPV Committee Chairman Felix Nemirovsky via email at felix@chubaconsulting.com.

---

Photo Backup Roundtable Discussion

If a disaster is on your doorstep, what will you do? Whether it is an impending hurricane, tornado, fire or response to an earthquake, the most immediate reaction is to grab your kids, pets and the family photo album and leave the area of danger. However, today’s precious family memories are not necessarily stored as prints in a bulky album or a box, but are often on a computer hard drive. A better option is if the photos are stored on CDs or DVDs, which are compact and portable, as it is unlikely that there will be time to disconnect the computer and tote it out of the house when there may be only minutes to get safely out of harms way.

OSTA has been pondering just such a scenario, and has encouraged people contemplating their own disaster preparedness plans to put backing up their photos and data to easily portable CD or DVD discs near the top of their preparation list.

As a next step, a roundtable discussion on a proposed OSTA initiative to create a utility that allows quick and easy backup of photos stored on a PC is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 6, during the next OSTA quarterly meeting at the Embassy Suites, South San Francisco. The purpose of the meeting is to bring together various parties who are interested in participating in the development of a utility that searches for jpg files, or other photo and video files formats.

At the present time, there isn’t an industry standard utility to allow backup of a defined list of files. A standard for communicating between typical applications and a backup utility would be very helpful to enable users to quickly and easily select a group of important data files to duplicate or backup to optical disc or USB flash drive or upload to an online storage site. A way to tag files that haven’t already been backed up is one of the topics to discuss. Photo backup is a logical first step to get users in the habit of backing up data, because images cannot easily be replaced if they are lost.

We encourage companies or individuals with an interest in optical media or drives, and digital imaging (preserving files) to participate in the roundtable discussion.

For more on the OSTA’s
ad hoc ODAT Committee, visit
http://www.osta.org/odat
A presentation with the
ODAT proposal for the
Global working group is
posted at this site.

Update on Optical Disc Archive Testing

ODAT's charter is to develop optical media archival test methodology and promote its implementation. The anticipated end result is customer assurance in their purchases, improving their ability to make informed purchase decisions based on price and archival performance.

The September OSS conference sponsored an exploratory meeting to delve into what role OSTA could play in the development of industry standard optical media reliability, test methodology and implementation. Interested parties were invited to share their ideas on how to align various worldwide activities to create a single working group that would deal with this subject. One very interesting result was attendance by key members of the Japan based CDs21 group, who expressed their cooperative position.

Follow up to that will be a meeting in Kyoto, Japan on November 29 where the chief topic will be media life expectancy and how to determine it. Attendees will continue to explore ways to unify efforts towards the establishment of industry standard test methods and statements on life expectancy. We will begin to discuss the various formats and material designs of optical media and how results may differ. It is an open meeting for those who are interested in attending. For details please contact Chris Smith, ODAT Chairman, via email at chris.smith@am.sony.com.

Following the Kyoto meeting, Chris Smith will present the OSTA ODAT initiative to the 12th ISO/IEC JTC1 SC23, the optical subcommittee of ISO, on Dec. 1, also in Kyoto.

OSTA’s next quarterly meeting will include the first regular session of the ODAT committee, at 1:30 p.m., Dec. 5, at the Embassy Suites, South San Francisco. The group will convene to consider the events since September and make plans going forward such as setting mission, clarifying membership, deciding leadership, setting target schedules and work plans. Once established, ODAT is envisioned to be divided into two working groups, WG1 (technical) and WG2 (business promotion). OSTA members with interest in either of these subjects are encouraged to attend in order to share their ideas and join in this very challenging effort.

Missed OSS 2005?
Optical Storage Symposium Presentations Available Online

The presentations from the Sept. 28, 2005 Optical Storage Symposium are now available online. Visit http://www.osta.org/oss/agenda.htm

– Blue Laser Optical Storage: A Technology Waiting to Happen
– What to Choose…Alternate Data Storage Technologies
– The Search for an Archival Medium - The 100 year Optical Disc
– Imaging Interoperability Between CE Devices
How Do We Get There?
– Beyond DVD - What's In Store for the Future of Archival Optical Media

Missed OSS 2005? Optical Storage Symposium Presentations Available Online

 

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
  Optical Storage Technology Association
  

  Once again, we are pleased to bring you information on the progress being made within our organization on a number of fronts.
  
  The MPV Committee has been hard at work in 2005, rolling out the MPV Interoperability Specification and supporting training information, test plans and more. Their October seminar in Japan led to the creation of a very informative set of presentations now available on our website, with clear explanations of the need for MPV, the current status of the specifications and adoption, test tools, licensing and more. Today, the MPV specifications address a wide range of consumer applications, including personal media files managed on a PC, streaming content, archival sharing, and connected collection exchange, whether it’s via optical disc, USB drive, home networking devices or web and server uploads. The fundamental building blocks are now complete, and application-specific specification are being developed for music, presentation, TV broadcast, and print, and the digital camera guidelines are soon to be published. The portable storage profile facilitates exchange of data collections from one storage device to another.
  
  Newer initiatives include the new OSTA committee on Optical Disk Archive Testing, and a possible new photo backup initiative. If either of these are of interest to you, I encourage you to get involved and take an active role.
  
  Over the past few months, members representing the optical storage media community worked together to provide suggestions to hurricane victims on cleaning and recovering data from CDs or DVDs that may have been damaged, and joined with Kroll OnTrack Data Recovery to assist hurricane victims in recovering precious photos that may have been lost or damaged by the storms.
  
  OSTA encourages you to provide the organization with any feedback you may have. I also would like to invite interested industry participants to attend our next quarterly meeting. For more information on membership or the organization’s activities, visit the OSTA Web site at www.osta.org, or contact Debbie Maguire, OSTA Administrator, at (408) 253-3695 or at debbieostaorg.
  
  Warmest regards,
  
  David Bunzel
  President