INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION
ORGANISATION INTERNATIONALE DE NORMALISATION
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11
CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO

ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11
N3774 (Audio)
January 2001 - Pisa, Italy

Title: Audio Press Release of the 55th MPEG Meeting

Audio Call for Proposals

At the Pisa MPEG meeting, the Audio subgroup reviewed the response to the "Call for Evidence Justifying the Testing of Audio Coding Technology." Based on the evidence brought forward, a "Call For Proposals for New Tools for Audio Coding," N3794, was issued at this meeting. The Call for Proposals is narrowly focused in the following two areas:

WG11 is interested in technology that:

1. improves compression efficiency of audio signals or speech signals by means of bandwidth extension, and that is forward and backward compatible with existing MPEG-4 technology;
2. improves compression efficiency of high-quality audio signals by means of parametric coding. It is very desirable that this technology builds upon the existing MPEG-4 HILN or other MPEG-4 technology.

The Call for Proposals document outlines a process for moving from proposals to standardized technology, as follows:

1. New proposals are evaluated for sufficient merit.
2. In the case of multiple proposals, a comparative test will determine Verification Model 1.
3. There will be a collaborative phase to improve upon the Verification Model using the core experiment process.
4. A formal verification test with specific acceptance criterion will determine if the technology moves ahead in the standardization process.

The response to the Call for Proposals will be reviewed at the July MPEG meeting.

MPEG-4 Corrigenda and Edition 2001 (COR Jan 01)

Corrections to 14496-3 and 14496-3/AMD1 have issues as 14496-3/COR1. Together these three documents (ISO/IEC 14496-3, 14496-3/AMD1 and 14496-3/COR1) fully describe the MPEG-4 Audio standard and incorporate all know corrections and clarifications. MPEG is moving to merge these three documents into a single document, ISO/IEC 14496-3:2001 Edition, which is expected to be available as early as the next MPEG meeting. The 2001 Edition will be an invaluable resource to companies interested in implementing the MPEG-4 Audio technology.

MPEG-4 Conformance (FDAM Jan 01)

The MPEG Audio subgroup has made a contribution to the MPEG-4 Conformance specification. The text of the conformance specification is complete. All Version 1 and more than half of Version 2 Audio conformance bitstreams are available.

For more information, check the full Press Release of the 55th MPEG Meeting.