Standards Should Make it Easier to Swap Discs
OSTA's MPV faces HighMAT from a Microsoft alliance in effort to set a standard for organizing multimedia files regardless of device.Melissa J. Perenson, PCWorld.com
LAS VEGAS--If you've been frustrated by pokey performance, misformatted file names, or other anomalies when you try to play a CD packed with MP3s on a supposedly compatible DVD player, the vendors feel your pain--and they're beginning to craft a solution.
Being shown here at the Consumer Electronics Show this week are two similar but competing specifications for a metafile format designed to ensure compatibility between PC formats and consumer electronics devices. Both camps sound like they're trying to achieve the same thing: Create what is essentially a playlist file that helps speed access to multimedia content on a disc--regardless of the device used.
Competing solutions are proposed by the Optical Storage Technology Association and a partnership between Microsoft and Matsushita. OSTA announced its development of the Music Photos Video format just six weeks ago; Microsoft and Matsushita introduced their spec, the HighMAT format, in late October.
MPV Goes Open Source
The problem arises because with traditional consumer electronics, the users didn't produce content--much less play it back on any of several devices, says Pieter van Zee, senior architect at Hewlett-Packard's digital imaging group and principal developer of the MPV format. OSTA is the organization that sought to hammer out DVD incompatibilities years ago.
He describes the MPV format as "a standard way of representing collections of music, photo, or video assets." It needed to identify links between files, since images and music may be played as a package, he notes. The challenge is more dramatic when you realize that more than 17 manufacturers make picture disks. "Without a standardized playlist format like MPV, device manufacturers would have to hand-code support for those 17 picture disk variants into the device's firmware," he says.
OSTA's specification calls for a small application--just 50KB--that indexes a disc's content. It creates a kind of universal playlist file designed to work in Windows, Macintosh, and Linux environments, as well as in firmware operating systems for consumer devices, van Zee says. Because the software development kit is an open-source specification, no licensing fees are charged.
In PCs, MPV is entirely software; in consumer electronics devices, firmware must support MPV discs, van Zee says. Among the companies backing the MPV spec are Kodak, Rimage, Pixel Magic Imaging, Roxio, Sonic Solutions, HP, ArcSoft, ACD Systems, Ulead, MusicMatch, and Oak Technology. A number of consumer electronics makers and developers also support the spec, including LG Electronics, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, LSI Logic, Zoran, ESS Technology, and Planetweb.
As a demo here at CES, van Zee showed HP's Memories Disc Creator, which will support MPV in its forthcoming release. Also, Planetweb is showcasing its implementation of MPV-enabled DVD players using the company's DVD Player Digital Photo Manager. MusicMatch Jukebox currently will read MPV-formatted CDs for playback, although writing support is still in development. In addition, a future version of Ulead's PhotoExplorer will support MPV albums and projects.
As for the competition from Microsoft as codeveloper of the HighMAT spec, van Zee quickly points out that "HighMAT is a proprietary format, owned and managed by two companies, Microsoft and Panasonic." Still, he adds, "They're validating the problem that MPV is addressing, and we're glad that they're raising the visibility of this problem, and the need for a solution."
Microsoft's HighMAT Muscle
To hear Microsoft's Michael Aldridge talk, the goals behind HighMAT are similar, if not identical, to those of MPV.
"There's no consistent way for devices to read the data [on a disc]," Aldridge says, agreeing with van Zee. "The interface for finding the media is different, the viewable information is different and presented differently, and access times can [range] anywhere... up to [several] minutes," depending upon the device.
However, HighMAT gets a big jump by being supported in Windows. "It will be supported in Windows XP, with the final version of our Windows Media Player 9 and Windows Movie Maker," Aldridge says. Although HighMAT is a proprietary metafile format, it can coexist on a disc with other technologies, such as MPV, he adds.
Like MPV, HighMAT is entirely a software-support issue on the PC side, and a firmware requirement for consumer devices. Also like MPV, it supports incremental authoring, also known as multisession burning. Unlike MPV, the announced spec is only for CD-R and CD-RW discs.
"The publishing spec provides a way for organizing data on the CD so it's optimized and can be accessed with lower-powered units," Aldridge says. Like MPV, it creates a metafile the device can access to get information about files on the CD.
"With HighMat, your media files are unchanged, so they can be copied or reedited as desired," Aldridge says. "It preserves the original fidelity and format that your media comes in, but provides the flexibility to still take it to a myriad of different devices, and have it optimized to have it quickly accessed, recognized, and easily navigated." MPV doesn't touch the original image, either, but it does create a thumbnail image and a rescaled image to fit the format of the device.
Asked about OSTA's competing spec, Aldridge points to Microsoft's close synergy with codeveloper Matsushita as being a strength of HighMAT.
"OSTA's technology spec has the same intent, but they haven't worked hand-in-hand with the [consumer electronics] companies," Aldridge says. "Microsoft, Matsushita, and Fujifilm have been working behind a joint solution that both the software and CE industry can rally behind, and can really create a symbiotic effect." But like OSTA's supporters and others in the industry, he expects PCs and consumer media devices to need to coexist and cooperate for some time.