At its August 21 meeting in Redwood City, Calif., the Multimedia Benchmark Committee (MBC) reconfirmed its benchmarking priorities, solidified the steps it will take to acquire content and encode it, and outlined an aggressive schedule for its first release.

The project group voted unanimously to pursue MPEG-2 video as the target of its first benchmark, the alpha version of which is expected by the end of this year. Secondary priorities are Dolby AC-3 Audio 5.1 and MPEG-2 L2 Audio. The group outlined how it will obtain and encode content, which will include free content provided by members and member contacts within the broadcasting industry, donations from members and other sources, and purchased content.

The benchmark release schedule was reconfirmed at the meeting and interim processes within the schedule were defined. Under the schedule, a technical subcommittee will develop a harness for measuring frame rate, drop and jitter factors. In parallel, project group members will develop measurement methods for fidelity and audio synch with video.