Research, standards and thoughts for the digital world

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Standards and collaboration

The hurdles of standardisation today Making standards is not like any other tasks. In most cases it is technical in nature because it is about agreeing on and documenting how certain things should be done to claim to be conforming to the standard. Standards can be developed unilaterally by someone powerful enough to tell other people how they should do things. More often, however, standards are developed collaboratively by people who share an interest in a standard, i.e. in enabling…

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The talents, MPEG and the master

Introduction In the parable of the Talents the Gospel tells the story of a master who entrusts 5 talents (a large amount of money at that time) to one servant and 2 talents to another before leaving for a long travel. The first servant works hard and doubles his talents, while the second plays safe and buries the talents. When the master returns, he awards the first servant and punishes the second. Thirty-one years ago, MPEG was given the field…

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Standards and business models

Introduction Some could think that the title is an oxymoron. Indeed standards, certainly international ones, are published by not-for-profit organisations. How could they have a business model? The answer is that around a standard there are quite a few entities, some of which are far from being not-for-profit. Therefore, this article intends to analyse how business models can influence standards. The actors of standardisation Let’s first have a look at the actors of standardisation. The first actor is the organisation…

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On the convergence of Video and 3D Graphics

Table of contents Introduction Computer-generated scenes and video are worlds apart Point cloud compression 3DoF+compression Commonalities and differences of PCC and 3DoF+ How can we achieve further convergence? Conclusions Introduction For a few years now, MPEG has explored the issue of to efficiently represent (i.e. compress) data from a range of technologies offering users dynamic immersive visual experiences. Here the word “dynamic” captures the fact that the user can have an experience where objects move in the scene as opposed…

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Developing standards while preparing for the future

Introduction In Einige Gespenster gehen um in der Welt - die Gespenster der Zauberlehrlinge I described the case of an apprentice who operates in an environment that practices some mysterious arts (that in the past could have been called sorcery). Soon the apprentice wakes up at the importance of what he is learning/doing and thinks he has learned enough to go his own way. The reality is that the apprentice has not learnt yet the art not because he has…

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No one is perfect, but some are more accomplished than others

In quite a few of my articles on this blog I have described how well MPEG has managed to create generic standards for the media industry, how many new standards keep on being produced to support the expansion of the media business and how much the expansion has brought benefits to that industry. The first part of the title, however, reminds us that MPEG is an organisation created by humans and populated by humans. As MPEG is not and cannot…

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