MPEG-7

MPEG-7 is a multimedia content description standard. This description will be associated with the content itself, to allow fast and efficient searching for material that is of interest to the user. MPEG-7 is formally called Multimedia Content Description Interface. Thus, it is not a standard which deals with the actual encoding of moving pictures and audio, like MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. It uses XML to store metadata, and can be attached to timecode in order to tag particular events, or synchronise lyrics to a song, for example.

It was designed to standardize:
a set of Description Schemes (short DS in the standard) and Descriptors (short D in the standard)
a language to specify these schemes, called the Description Definition Language (short DDL in the standard)
a scheme for coding the description

The combination of MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 has been referred to as MPEG-47.

MPEG-7 objectives
Provide a fast and efficient searching, filtering and content identification method.
Describe main issues about the content (low-level characteristics, structure, models, collections, etc.).
Index a big range of applications.
Audiovisual information that MPEG-7 deals is : Audio, voice, video, images, graphs and 3D models
Inform about how objects are combined in a scene.
Independence between description and the information itself.


MPEG-7 applications

There are many applications and application domains which will benefit from the MPEG-7 standard. A few application examples are:
Digital library: Image/video catalogue, musical dictionary.
Multimedia directory services: e.g. yellow pages.
Broadcast media selection: Radio channel, TV channel.
Multimedia editing: Personalized electronic news service, media authoring.
Security services: Traffic control, production chains...
E-business: Searching process of products.
Cultural services: Art-galleries, museums...
Educational applications.
Biomedical applications.