MHEG: An emerging standard for the interchange of multimedia and hypermedia objects

Abstract

Bpartment : aAudiovisua1 Documents and Telematics,, FRANCE TELECOM/CCETT 4, rue du Clos Courtel -35512, ABSTRACTThis paper aims at presenting major issues on multimedia and hypermedia information objects standardization. The purpose of such a standardization is first discussed, by examining what are the interchange needs generated by the explosion of multimedia communication and by the dissemination of multimedia applications in various fields (education, information, business office systems, etc....). When interchange and interoperability among heterogeneous systems are required, standardization becomes a major issue, as long as it provides the users with appropriate structures taking into account their current development and equipment environments. The level of complexity that should be addressed by a standard for the interchange of multimedia and hypermedia information is discussed, leading to a <<layered>> structure which separates a generic object layer from upper layers dealing with specific applications and structured documents, and lower layers dealing with monomediacontentdata.The representationand encoding of such Multimedia and Hypermedia Information Objects, for the special needs of real time, interactive and communicating applications, is the purpose of an ISO/IEC group (ISO/IEC JTCl /sC29/ WG12/MHEG), the workof which is presented by this paper. The scope of the MHEG standard is first explained, then an overview of the hierarchy of Objects Classes is provided, with some considerations on the relationships between MHEG and its using applications The work of MHEG is to be considered as part of the overall context of standardization activities in the field of multimedia and hypermedia systems in general, a field which is briefly outlined before the conclusion.