A Scalable Presentation Format for Multichannel Publishing Based on MPEG-21 Digital Items

In order to experience true Universal Multimedia Access, people want to access their multimedia content anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Several solutions exist which allow content providers to offer video, audio, and graphics to as many devices as possible by using scalable coding techniques. In addition, content providers also need a scalable presentation format to be able to create a presentation once and distribute it to all possible target devices. This paper introduces a scalable presentation format combining MPEG-21 technology with the User Interface Markup Language. The introduced presentation format is based on assigning types to MPEG-21 Digital Items and can be used to create a presentation once, whereupon several device-specific versions can be extracted. The reuse of resource and presentation information together with the use of a device-independent presentation language are hereby the key parameters in the development of the scalable presentation format.