The Evolution of Rich Media

Digital content is changing the face of application development. Conventional business platforms are not capable of managing the complex structure and relationships of digital assets. A rich-media platform is proposed.

Business platforms for application development have made significant evolutionary progress. Only recently has there been a truly open and portable platform implemented by multiple vendors for building business applications and services. But, these application platforms lack the ability to sufficiently handle today’s digital assets, such as product photographs, streaming audio and video, and marketing materials. Existing relational-database systems are often a company’s most important asset. But these systems don’t provide the structure required to efficiently manipulate and manage a wide variety of rich-media content.

In addition, new business models are evolving around the delivery of digital assets. These new ways of doing business require expanding application-integration capabilities for digital content. Existing media businesses are also realizing the value of managing and digitizing their assets in order to reduce costs and generate revenue. Current business platforms, however, do not meet these application requirements because there exists a fundamental difference between a relational asset and a digital asset.

Current mechanisms for accessing digital assets and properties are proprietary. Building business applications around these proprietary technologies introduces risks that the technology will be supplanted, or even that the technology will become unsupported due to changing business conditions. Standards are emerging for the manipulation of digital assets, but they are complex and require specialized knowledge. Securing digital assets through rights-management systems is possible today and many standards have been proposed. But, these proposals are offered by a particular vendor and only support that vendor’s implementation. What is needed is an open-software platform that understands the structural details of rich-media content and provides a straightforward, standards-based interface for application development.

Digital Content Standards

Standards are critical to the adoption of a any platform. Major standards efforts are underway in two major communities with respect to an enterprise rich-media platform - the Java Community Process (JCP) and the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG). These efforts address the application-developer platform and the rich-media services, respectively. Additional standardization efforts revolve around describing digital assets and their associated metadata.

MPEG standards are developed and delivered by experts in audio and video encoding and delivery. Consumers are already familiar with the MPEG group’s work if they have ever used an MP3 player or a DVD player, both of which use formats and technology developed by this standards body. The MPEG standards described in the following sections are important to the development of a rich-media platform. Other interesting standards are MPEG-1 and 2, regarding encoding audio and video content at various bandwidths, and MPEG-4, regarding the synthesis of multiple media formats and streams into a single user experience and introducing a new CODEC that allows variable bit-rate (VBR) encoding of audio and video.

MPEG-7 defines a format for encoding metadata for digital assets. Although not in heavy use today, MPEG-7 is an important reference point for considering the role of metadata in a rich media platform. Metadata will be discussed in detail later in this article.

MPEG-21 provides a definition of the media value chain. Although it is not yet complete as a standard or specification, it is a useful model for a media platform. As the MPEG-21 standard emerges, it will become easier to create a solution on a compliant platform.

Asset Value Chain

To better understand the need for a rich-media platform, it is useful to review the MPEG-21 asset value chain by describing the goals, inputs, and outputs of each step in the value chain. The MPEG-21 asset value chain outlines the process by which content-providers and users will manipulate digital assets. The process has the following elements:

1. Archive
2. Commission
3. Elaborate
4. Capture
5. Analysis
6. Synthesis Composition
7. Packaging
8. Delivery
9. Consumption
10. Feedback

The archive is the central repository in the MPEG-21 value chain. It is a specialized storage medium, similar to a relational database, but with content-oriented features. Specifically, it can store both the content and its associated metadata. Typically, the archive will also provide advanced services such as version control, indexing, and searching.

Capturing requirements is the beginning of the asset value chain process. The mechanism for capturing the requirements is application-specific. A rich-media platform will define the service interface. Once an item is commissioned, it may be necessary to refine the requirements.

After the requirements of the end product are established, it is often necessary to collect the raw materials in the form of digital assets such as video, images, and audio. This phase specifically relates to the collection of these raw materials. Then, the raw materials from the capture phase are studied to determine how they are to be combined into the finished product.

Creating the finished good for each of the raw materials and creating any additional materials occurs in the synthesis phase. The goal of the Composition phase is to produce the layout of the final media product. Here, individual finished materials are combined into the final digital product.

Once the layout is complete, the materials must be packaged into a useable format. In the rich-media world, a package is typically a specific file format. Examples include MPEG-4, RealMedia, Windows Media, SMIL, and even non-media specific formats such as ZIP.

The finished package is then moved to its destination in the delivery phase. A digital asset may be moved to a server that is capable of delivering the package to the consumer, or it may be delivered directly to the consumer.

Consumers must be capable of viewing the finished product. Consumption may be facilitated through a specialized server, particularly in the case of streaming audio and video. Specialized software that understands the package format is required in all cases. A web browser is required to view HTML, for example, and is sufficient to view most static image formats (e.g. - GIF, JPEG, and PNG). But a digital player is required for more complex digital assets. For example, the RealPlayer™ is required to view formats specific to RealNetworks’ solutions.

After consuming the media content, the user is offered the opportunity to provide feedback. There are two primary forms of feedback - delivery and quality - both of which measure the success of the final product. Delivery criteria include metrics that can typically be collected automatically, including frame drop rates in streaming applications and on-time delivery statistics. Quality criteria are more subjective and are useful in determining if the business goal of the media is achieved. A user polling application is an example of a quality measurement tool.

If the consumer is not the end-user of the content, additional feedback may be given that will cause another iteration of the MPEG-21 value chain. An example is a company that commissions an ad agency to produce a commercial. The company would use the ad agency’s feedback mechanism to request changes to the original content.

Java Community Process