Object-Oriented Television

In search of more compression, researchers have recently sought to describe digital video of real scenes not as sequences of frames but rather as collections of objects that are rendered and combined according to scripting information. Depending upon the application and the scene analysis tools available, representations may range from two-dimensional layers to full three-dimensional computer-graphics-style data bases. The significance of these more meaningful representations goes beyond compression, however, enabling new forms of interactivity and personalization, as well as new degrees of freedom in post-production. This paper proposes a computational framework for a television receiver that can handle digital video in forms from traditional motion-compensated transform coders to sets of three-dimensional objects and discusses the requirements for a scripting language to control such a receiver. It is also noted that the concept of scalability can be expanded to include intelligently resizable video, where the originator of a video sequence can specify how the scene is to be composed and cut for displays of differing sizes and aspect ratios.