Oracle Corp will this week trumpet a beta release of its Video Server 3.0 technology but what’s more interesting is a little- heard of submission of a specification for use as the basis of the MPEG-4 standard it has made in conjunction with IBM, Netscape, Sun, SGI and others. ISO’s Moving Picture Expert Group is expected to choose an MPEG-4 specification from five or more proposals already submitted when it meets in Tokyo next months. Oracle believes the committee will vote down a rival specification based upon the Microsoft/Progressive Networks ASF Active Streaming Format. MPEG-4 will define multimedia application specifications for video, audio, arbitrary shapes, animation and some meta information. Along with MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 it describes content. MPEG-7, proposals for will be submitted in November – but not ratified until November 2000 – will define ways to search for multimedia content using traditional descriptions such as text, color and sound. MPEG-4 is expected to drive momentum in the market for internet-based video. Products are not expected for another couple of years. Meantime, Oracle says Video Server 3.0 has been enhanced for use by satellite, interactive and digital video broadcasters and offers real-time video feed and enhanced content management. Version one was designed for broadband cable operators and version two for video over corporate networks. The server software supports content developed using encoders that use Oracle’s Video Encoding Standard interface and runs on ten hardware platforms. It uses a database rather than a file systems as a store for video content. The $100m business is a drop in the ocean for Oracle, but important as the market is still immature. á
