MHEG

CCITT has proposed the future international standard for multimedia and hypermedia information objects, also known as the MHEG Standard. "The scope of the MHEG standard is to define the representation and encoding of multimedia and hypermedia information objects that will be interchanged as a whole within or across applications or services, by any means of interchange including storage devices, telecommunications or broadcast networks." [[CCITT, 1992]. The initial objectives of the MHEG standard include meeting the following requirements:

• Provide abstractions for real-time presentation including multimedia synchronization and interactivity.
• Provide abstractions for real-time interchange with minimal buffering using normal speed data communications.
• Provide abstractions for direct manipulation of information without any additional processing.
• Provide linking facilities between elements of composite multimedia objects.

The main MHEG classes include: Content Class, Selection Class and Modification Class, Link Class, Script Class, Composite Class, and Description Class. The objects play a federating role, enabling different applications to share the basic information resource. These objects can be encoded using ASN.1 or SGML and will provide a common base for other CCITT recommendations, ISO and other standards, user defined architectures and applications.