iVAST, Tribeworks team up for MPEG-4 authoring app

iVAST, an MPEG solutions specialist, has contracted with Tribeworks — which develops software for creating and delivering next-generation, rich-media applications — to develop and co-market a set of MPEG-4 authoring tools based on the iVAST MPEG-4 Studio software developers kit and Tribeworks’ iShell technology.

MPEG-4 is a new consumer standard with broad support in the consumer electronics industry. Apple is among the supporters of this new standard.

The toolset will enable content developers to combine audio, video, graphics, text, animation and interactivity to create “exciting” rich media user experiences, said Duncan Kennedy, president and CEO of Tribeworks.

“We are very excited to be working with iVast on providing rich-media developers new tools that will make production of interactive MPEG-4 content a reality,” Tribeworks spokespeson Marc Siegle told MacCentral. “The new authoring tool will be based on the iVAST MPEG-4 Studio SDK and Tribeworks iShell technology. Developers familiar with the iShell user interface will find the new tool very familiar.”

iShell is a QuickTime-native multimedia authoring suite that enables the creation of customized media players that launch from a Web site. iShell 2 added the ability to create customized streaming media players that can be authored and played on Mac and Windows/NT systems. iShell players can be of any arbitrary shape, can contain holes, and have the ability to play in the foreground or the background. Version 2.5.1 can be downloaded from the Tribeworks Web site.

MPEG-4 is the latest international standard issued by the ISO/IEC and developed by its Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the organization that introduced MPEG-1 and MPEG-2. These earlier compression standards serve as the underlying delivery technology for high definition television, digital video broadcasting, direct broadcast by satellite, digital cable television systems, DVDs and interactive CD-ROMs. Building on the success of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards, MPEG-4 enables integrated, interactive, targeted multimedia delivery across any network — whether broadcast or broadband, wireless or wireline — and via electronic or physical distribution to any device, from set-top boxes to personal computers and personal digital assistants.

Built on top of the MPEG-4 standard, the iVAST Platform is an end-to-end MPEG-4 solution for the creation, publishing, distribution and playback of interactive audio and video content across broadband and broadcast networks. The iVAST Platform consists of the iVAST Studio for encoding and authoring, the iVAST Application Server for publishing capabilities, the iVAST Media Server for intelligent streaming, and the iVAST Player for media playback and interactivity on end user devices. The iVAST Platform was architected with MPEG-4 systems level support.