Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group Charter

The mission of the Multimedia Semantics XG, part of the W3C Incubator Activity, is as follows:

Show how metadata interoperability can be achieved by using the Semantic Web technologies to integrate existing multimedia metadata standards. Thus, the goal of the XG is NOT to invent new multimedia metadata formats, but to leverage and combine existing approaches.
Show, in addition to the interoperability advantages, the added value of the formal semantics provided by the Semantic Web. The XG will describe practical applications and services that provide extra functionality by using, for example, subsumption reasoning or rule-based approaches. These applications could be multi-platform, i.e. adapted to any device that accesses the web.
Provide best practices for annotating and using multimedia content on the Web, based on practical use cases that identify the users, the type of content and the type of metadata that they want to provide.

Join the Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group.

End date	1 May 2007
Confidentiality	Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs	The Incubator Group will be co-chaired by Jeff Pan (University of Aberdeen) <jpan@csd.abdn.ac.uk> and Raphaël Troncy (CWI Amsterdam) <Raphael.Troncy@cwi.nl>. A new co-chair with an industrial background might replace one of the academic chair during the lifetime of the XG.
Sponsoring Members	IVML-NTUA CWI University of Aberdeen University of Maryland DFKI
Usual Meeting Schedule	Regular meetings will be held fortnightly using the W3C's Zakim telephone/IRC facility. The mailing lists will provide an important part of the communication both internally and externally. In an effort to minimize costs, face to face meetings will be co-located with other meetings that a significant number of participants are attending. Potential candidates for co-locating face to face meetings include the SAMT2006 or ISWC2006 conferences.

Scope

Interest for the publication of multimedia content in the Web is growing. Museums, archives, TV channels, private companies and personal users all publish on the media content on the Web: images videos, music, etc. These media contents usually come with some metadata (created manually, semi-automatically or automatically), which are generated by some processes in the life-cycle of multimedia documents, including pre-production, production, post-production, processing, archiving, search and retrieval, browsing, delivery, presentation, navigation and posting.

The need for standard representation multimedia metadata is recognized in a wide variety of different applications, covering both professional and personal usage of image data. Several standardization efforts tried to provide formats for multimedia metadata, covering different types of providers, users, processes and of metadata categories (examples include MPEG-7, MediaRSS, ID3, EXIF, VRA, various microformats etc). Unfortunately, the users are confused from all the above technologies and standards; consequently, multimedia contents in the Web usually are not annotated and thus the Web services concerning multimedia content are rather limited.

Deliverables

XG Report on using Semantic Web languages and tools for multimedia metadata interoperability
XG Report with use cases showing best practices for annotation multimedia content on the Web and the advantages of having explicit semantics for such annotations.

Dependencies

The Multimedia Semantics XG is planning to continue work on the drafts produced by the Multimedia Task force of the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group and/or use these drafts as input to the deliverables produced by this XG.
The Multimedia Semantics XG is planning to align its work with the Content Label XG and potentially other upcoming XGs in the area of media metadata. It is also expected to cooperate closely with the multimedia ontology requirement work initiated by Paola Hobson and Yiannis Kompatsiaris.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-xg-mmsem@w3.org (archive).

All technical work is discussed on a public mailing list and on public Web pages. Please note that the proceedings of this Incubator Group (mailing list archives, minutes, etc.) are publicly visible.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Patent Policy

This Incubator Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Incubator Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Incubator Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Incubator Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

Incubator Groups have as a goal to produce work that can be implemented on a Royalty Free basis, as defined in the W3C Patent Policy.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Additional Information

Impact of the work produced by this XG would be significantly enlarged if the major multimedia tool vendors would agree to add support for Semantic Web-enabled metadata to their products. The XG will therefore actively seek industrial support and participation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group has been created according to the Incubator Group Procedures documentation. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Raphaël Troncy, mmxg-list@cwi.nl

$Date: 2006/05/16 07:59:24 $