MP4 Format Breakthroughs and Innovations in Technology

[etronicsland]

Mp4 technology has wide cross-industry implications – from mobile phones and DVDs to PDAs and PCs. Carrying your jukebox and home theatre while on the move is a reality. Mp4 technology has not only revolutionized the world of entertainment by making them easily accessible to all, but has also made creation of personalized audio-video library a reality.

As we take a closer look at the evolving technologies in communications and audio-video electronics, we realize that technology has not only shrunk modern-day gadgets (for business and entertainment), but it has also made them increasingly customer-friendly and utility-driven. Interestingly, most modern-day gizmos already come loaded with a galaxy of features that promise unmatched benefits to consumers. With the passage of time newer features continue to be loaded on as consumers demand more.

In most electronics products, there are some features that endure for a long time, others that keep getting better with each passing year/season and a few that are ultrapopular one-day and disappear in a short while. It is difficult to attribute exact utility value to each of the features in a product, but there are those which possess all the qualities necessary to be termed ‘break-through innovations’. In this article, we analyze some of the aspects that make Mp4 technology a break-through innovation across the electronics sector.

MP4 History

MPEG-4 (Mp4) is an extensive set of key enabling technology specifications with audio and video at its core. It is fundamentally the global file extension for the official container format defined in the Mp4 standard (ISO 14496-14). It was defined by the MPEG, Moving Picture Experts Group, Committee. The working group within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that specified the widely adopted standards known as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. It is the result of an international effort involving hundreds of researchers and engineers, which later became an international standard in 1999. Mp4 was designed to be expandable so it could be adapted to include new technologies as they were developed. As a ‘container’, it could be scaled for various data transmission rates, which made it useful for most types of streaming, from dial-up modems to Ethernet networks.

Mp4s produce videos of DVD-quality through a broadband connection at less than 1 Mbps. This would mean that with an Mp4 player, one can retrieve videos through an Internet connection and watch them on his Mp4 player. This technology has its own disadvantages like piracy, since licensing and piracy problems are likely to get out of hand as Mp4 technology develops and gains popularity.

Mp4 files work through compression, which is similar to how Mp3 audio files are compressed, except slightly more complex. The videos are compressed into very small files without affecting quality is by dealing with specific coding issues.

Mp4 was built from the ground-up to allow for object oriented interactivity. The Mp4 standard embraces the concept of object-based coding and incorporates not just audio and video, but also 2D and 3D objects, animation, text, interactivity, data and more. As a result, it is possible to construct multimedia scenes that revolutionized the possibilities of interactive media. With Mp4, you could undertake interactive programming seamlessly by integrating audio/video with 2D, 3D objects, animation and interactivity. For example, a viewer could navigate a sporting event’s course from a 3D map, select information about aspects of the program, listen to commentary within a picture-in-picture window, and watch sponsored advertising – all within a single Mp4 stream supporting multiple media objects.

Mp4 allows the same interactive programming to be used across different delivery channels. The same interactive program could be used on a DVD or be delivered across a broadband network, something that is impossible with other technologies and standards. The power of Mp4 object-based interactivity is that the interactivity could be local (watching a live stream or playing back from a stored file such as on a CD-ROM or DVD), or remote (interacting with a media server).

Benefits of Object-Oriented-Interactivity

* Complete Standard-based Implementation: It facilitates interoperability across various Mp4 servers and terminals, as the presentation layer, communication and messaging protocols are defined by the standard.
* Flexibility and Creative Control: The experience of the media consumer and the user interface can be completely controlled by the content creator. As a result, the user has to only deal with a single, consistent user interface.
* Create Once, Distribute Everywhere: A unique feature of Mp4 technology is that it can be swapped in or out with ease, thereby enabling re-purposing of content without much difficulty.
* Delivery over Any Network: The separation of the media objects’ description and presentation enables Mp4 to deliver interactive data across broadcast, broadband or wireless networks.
* Delivery to Any Device: The Mp4 set of technologies enables content to flow seamlessly across media delivery networks to any type of end-device. This aspect gains greater relevance today given the proliferation of presentation devices – cell phones, PDAs, PCs and settop boxes, etc.
* Integrated Security and Copyright Protection: Mp4 addresses the concerns of content providers by integrating interfaces to digital rights management systems deeply into the system.
* Powerful Digital Asset Management: Treating metadata as an additional associated object within the scene allows for a complex set of archival capabilities, which brings ease into data management.

Universal Acceptance

To ensure that different products that use Mp4 technology implement the standard in a similar manner, Apple, together with Cisco, IBM, Kasenna, Philips and Sun Microsystems, formed the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA). Some of the other participants of ISMA include AOL Time Warner, Dolby Laboratories, Hitachi, HP, Fujitsu and 20 other companies. The ISMA defined a standard that companies implemented to ensure interoperability, which ensured that Mp4 supported all technologies – one company’s product was functional on another vendor’s player.

Satellite broadcasters such as DirecTV and the DVB adopted Mp4 for the delivery of digital television due to its quality at lower data rates. It meant that a broadcasting company would be able to offer more channels to their subscribers with the same bandwidth. Moreover, as Mp4 provided an open playing field, anyone could create an Mp4 player or encoder that would work with other manufacturers’ devices.