Lauren Barton
Martin Falck
Nelson Kile, Jr.
Carolyn O'Hare
Robert Ryan
Article summary of Standards and the Emergence of Digital MM Systems, E. Fox

  In 1990 several committees completed the technical specifications which
were necessary for the continued growth and expansion of the computer and
communications industries.  The industry will foster continued integration of
new technologies such as: multi-media, hypertext, teleconferencing.  The
synthesis of these tools could in fact change the way people learn.
  One of the most important standards is that for encoding images and video -
JPEG and MPEG.  The author envisions an era where the integration of
computers and communications and video continues at an even faster rate
based on the standards sets in the early 1990s.  The development of SGML,
first developed to describe any time based performance-becomes a doorway
to the later development of hypertext.
  The author recognizes the need for higher order systems and environments
which are needed to foster the continued development of digital multimedia.
He sees the need for continued development of a serial of tools, editors,
languages to construct these new environments.

=========================================================

From: (Group 5)
        Shirley Carr
        Mike Joyce
        Zakia Khan
        Vas Madhava
Article Summary (FOXE91b):

      Standards and the Emergence of Digital Multimedia Systems

This article is an introduction to seven other articles in this issue
of the CACM related to multimedia (MM).

The seven article can be divided into three main sections:

1) Digital Image and Video Standards.
   - The JPEG standard
   - MediaView which uses object oriented programming for MM document
     publishing. 
   - MPEG and its transmission over digital channels.

2) Hardware for Video Encoding and Decoding
   - DVI (Digital Video Interactive) chips being worked on by Intel
     for PC based MM applications.   The second generation DVI system
     will be portable across operating systems.  [ Unfortunately, the
     marketplace has decided not to go with this proprietary
     standard. ]
   - But the highest quality and speed will come from parallel
     processing.  Phillips has developed CD-I, a full motion video
     decoder and POOMA, a 100 processor Encoder.

3) Future Standards
   - Here features required for interactive digital video and both
     previous standards and future extensions are described.
   - Use of MM production and distribution issues
   - Use of Hypermedia/digital video news services
   - Development of SGML for MM 
     The Music description language is used for Hypermedia because
     both require time based performance. 
   - Extensions to ODA (the Office and Systems Document Architecture)
   - MHEG (MM and the Hypermedia Info Coding Experts Group) using
     object oriented methods. 

What's needed for future integration:

* It is essential to develop a framework for digital MM.  But this has
  only been recently addressed by the standards creating organization,
  ISO.
* Need full systems for both users and application programmers.
* Need full set of tools: Digitizes, MM editors, etc.


APPENDIX
Compression techniques:
  Text compression
  - Must be lossless.
  - Examples are Huffman, Arithmetic, Ziv Lempel, etc.
  - Typically get 2:1 reduction

Lossy techniques:
  - Can get up to 1000:1 reduction.
  - good for OCR, audio, video, images, etc.
  - Two types of compression can be done via ASICs:
    Vector quantization and Discrete Cosine Transformation.
  - Other lossy techniques include prediction and subband coding,
    preprocessing, Bit Allocation, postprocessing, etc.

Compression becomes more important because more and more data comes
into being.  NASA predicted that its needs would get to be several
terabytes/day.

=========================================================

MM Article Summaries by Group I: Fitzgerald, Kalafut, Klein, and Muhlenburg.
     "Standards and the Emergence of Digital Multimedia Systems"
                by Edward A. Fox, Guest Editor

     Digital Multimedia is upon us, and all areas of computer science
will be involved.  The way we learn will change with Digital
Multimedia.  This is an introduction and overview of this edition of
the ACM's articles that are grouped into 3 logical categories: digital
image and video standards, hardware for video encoding and decoding,
and future standards.  In the future, a framework for Digital
Multimedia will need to be developed.  The reader may find the
appendix and glossary to be helpful during his or her reading.