World Wide Web Consortium
Workshop
"Real Time Multimedia and the Web"
(RTMW '96)
On October 24 and 25, the W3C workshop "Real-time Multimedia and the Web" took place at the W3C site at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis.
About 70 participants have registered, among them the chair of the IETF working group on conference control (Mark Handley), a chief architect of Apple Quicktime (Peter Hoddie), a co-author of RTSP (Rob Lanphier), one of the editors of the RTP standard (Henning Schulzrinne), the former chair of the MPEG Systems group (Jan van der Meer) and the deputy director of W3C (Vincent Quint). 25% of the participants came from the US and 53% come from industry, 47% from research organizations.
The first day of this two-day event dealt with multimedia formats. Morning presentations both from industry (Alcatel, Macromedia, Apple) and from research organizations (GMD, University of Massachusetts/Lowell, INRIA Grenoble) set the stage for the discussions in the breakout sessions in the afternoon. The day ended with a sessions on "wild ideas and strong opinions" featuring talks on integrating games into the Web (University of Oslo), a caching infrastructure (Oracle) and a call for action to browser developers for better integration of live media (University of Ulm).
The hot topic of the second day was audio and video transmission on the Internet. It included a presentation of RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol) by one of the co-authors of this standard. RTSP has been proposed on October 9 by Netscape and Progressive Networks as a standard protocol for accessing real-time multimedia sources on the Internet. The first set of presentations discussed the feasibility of A/V transmission on the Internet (University of Lancaster, Columbia University, Nemesys). This is followed by a session in which interactive television experts (Philips) discussed with Internet experts (Lulea University, UCL) whether digital television services could be realized using Web technology. The second day finished with a discussion on the future directions of W3C work in the area of real-time multimedia on the Web.
The workshop was transmitted live on the MBone using IP multicast.
On October 16, representatives of the following organisations had registered for RTMW '96: Adobe (USA), Alcatel (France), Apple (USA), Bell Laboratories (USA), Canon (Japan), CCETT (France), CDT (Sweden), CSELT (Italy), Columbia University (USA), CWI (Netherlands), ENST (France), Ericsson (Sweden), GMD (Germany), Havas Editions Electroniques (France), IBM (France), IGD Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Germany), IMAG (France), INRIA, (France) Lancaster University (UK), Lucent (USA), Nemesys (UK), Nokia (Finland), Oracle (USA), Technical University Valencia (Spain), Telecom Italia, Macromedia (USA+UK), MC-Tel (Monaco), Philips Consumer Electronics (Netherlands), Progressive Networks (USA), UCL/ISI (UK), University of Massachusetts/Lowell (USA), University of Oslo (Norway), University of Ulm (Germany).
In the last year, there has been an increasing interest into the integration
of audio and video into the Web. The Web offers the unique opportunity
of fully integrating audio/video with many other media types (hypertext,
images, ...), making Web technology a contender for the "television
of the future".
However, lacking both a forum for standardisation and a common reference
implementation, current solutions for audio/video integration into the
Web tend to be piecemeal and non-interoperable. The purpose of this workshop
is to provide a forum for exploring future directions of standardisation
process in this area within the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).
Participants will be representatives of W3C member organisations and other
qualified experts from research and industry.
We solicit short position papers (one to maximally five pages) describing
anything from a "wild idea" to a complete specification or implementations.
The main areas of interest include (see also "W3C
Activity: Audio and Video"):
There will be a limit of 70 participants. There is no registration fee.
Potential participants should submit to the workshop chair short position
papers of one to five pages. Most importantly, the paper should state clearly
your potential contribution to/idea on the integration of real-time multimedia
into the Web. The papers can be submitted via e-mail (preferred) or in
paper form. Allowed formats for e-mail submissions are, in order of preference:
a URL to the paper, HTML, Postscript, PDF, RTF and ASCII.
Papers will be reviewed by the program committee. Based on the reviews,
we will ask a subset of participants to present talks. To maximize the
time spent in interactive discussions, not all attendees will make presentations.
However, all position papers will be included on the workshop website,
and will appear in the printed participants' proceedings. W3C may also
publish accepted papers.
Note: The website will be available ot the general public, so position
papers must be available for public dissemination.
Workshop participants may also be interested visiting the "Protocol
for High-Speed Networks" conference, which is scheduled at INRIA
Sophia-Antipolis in the week after theW3C workshop.
Papers will be made available on the Web. Printed participants' proceedings
will be distributed to workshop attendees. W3C may also publish accepted
papers in other media.
Philipp
Hoschka,
hoschka@w3.org
fax: +33 93 65 77 65
Tie Liao, INRIA Paris
Thierry Turletti, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis
The workshop will be held at INRIA
Sophia Antipolis. Sophia
Antipolis is a technology park situated on the French
Riviera, close to Cannes, Nice
and the Italian border. It easily reachable from Nice
International Airport (20 minutes by car). Direct flights from the
US (New York) and most major airports in Europe are available. Hotel rooms
at various price categories will be reserved and proposed to the participants.