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The difficulties crop up not only with disc formats, but also with memory cards. "Many devices have the same need for consistent access to and playback of digital media content storage on memory cards," van Zee says. "Often this content is created on the CE device and then needs to be transferred to other CE devices or to a PC. For example, digital cameras allow consumers to easily create hundreds of photo, video, and even audio files, but they organize their content in diverse ways, so it is very hard to offer the consumer a digital player that recreates the experience captured by any particular camera." Competing approaches
Just as there is general agreement on the fact that there is a problem, there is also seeming accord on the need to develop what Aldridge describes as "a standard way for PCs to structure digital media on physical formats and for consumer electronics devices to read these discs. This will eliminate compatibility issues, make startup times for data CDs and other physical formats shorter, and give consumers a consistent, easy navigation experience no matter what format of device they use." Unfortunately, consensus on the solution breaks down when it comes to a specific implementation. Thus, it looks as if two competing efforts to address the problem will come to market, potentially creating another set of inconsistencies to befuddle consumers. On the one hand, the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) has developed an open specification called "MPV" (for "MultiPhoto/Video") that is based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Microsoft and Panasonic, meanwhile, have announced their own metadata file format called "HighMAT." As described by Felix Nemirovsky, general manager of the OMSG division of Oak Technology in Sunnyvale, California, MPV provides a searchable database that supports a rich presentation of personal collections of content. The specification—the result of a year-long industry-wide development process involving not only OSTA, but also the International Imaging Industry Association (I3A)—is currently supported by at least 21 companies including Alera, ArcSoft, Kodak, ESS Technology, HP, Imation, LSI Logic, Oak Technology, Philips, Plasmon, Rimage, Roxio, Samsung, Sonic Solutions, Ulead Systems, Verbatim, and Zoran. At January's CES show in Las Vegas, OSTA representatives sought to add to the list and heighten MPV's profile by holding private meetings with interested CE manufacturers, media representatives, and industry analysts. The 1.0 version of the specification, which may be found on the OSTA Web site (www.osta.org/mpv), was released in November 2002 and may be accessed and used without licensing or royalty fees. Also accessible through OSTA's site is the MPVTools SDK 1.0, an implementation of MPV reading, writing, and playback capability. Available at no cost as source code for general use in commercial products, the SDK is in the C language and is suitable for firmware deployment. "MPV is an open specification," says van Zee, who was OSTA's editor for the specification. "It will greatly enhance the ease-of-use and success of creating and organizing content on PCs, burning it on CDs or transferring to memory cards, and enjoying it on CE devices like DVD and music players that are adding support for new digital media formats. MPV also enhances the interoperability of content created on CE devices with other CE devices and with PCs. MPV-enabled disc burning software and MPV-enabled CE devices and software players are in development for release in 2003." According to Nemirovsky, the display of the information in the MPV XML file itself will depend on the user interface implementation of the "rendering device" (player). "However, the navigation and presentation will be the same on all devices. The device just reads the MPV file and parses the XML code to understand the metadata structure." From location to presentation
According to HP's van Zee, five kinds of information are stored in an MPV "album/playlist": location, identity, metadata, relationships, and presentation control. "Location," he says, "is one or more filename(s) or URLs where the content is located. These are file system-specific, allowing MPV to represent content located on media with multiple file systems. MPV supports the use of long filenames created by consumers." Content may also be identified independently of the filename using identity information consisting of what van Zee refers to as "one or more digital signatures. This is useful if the filename has changed or the file has moved and the application wants to rediscover the current filename. It is also useful in Internet applications to avoid moving files unnecessarily." Relationship information allows related content to be identified and grouped. "For example," van Zee says, "the same image in high-resolution, screen-resolution, and thumbnail sizes can be grouped together. This makes it easy to access the most appropriate content representation and can dramatically enhance playback performance by using small-sized representations." Metadata, meanwhile, is an open category for information about the content. "MPV defines a few basic metadata values, such as title, creator/author, dates, formats, and so forth," van Zee says, "but software and device manufacturers can also define their own metadata."
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