[flac-dev] IETF standardization: RFC by November 9

[Tessa Fallon]

Dear all,

We are excited to announce that the our CELLAR working group charter
for the standardization of FFV1, Matroska, and FLAC has been made
available for external review.  What this means is that it is now
under review and available for comment to the wider IETF community.
Please send any comments you might have(including statement of
support)to the IESG mailing list by November 9, 2015.

The mailing list for review comments is here:  iesg at ietf.org

In the upcoming weeks, we will begin actively posting to the newly established
CELLAR working group mailing list at cellar at ietf.org.

Please sign up for the new mailing list here:
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cellar

I've included the draft charter below, which I've sent to the mailing
list previously.  The charter can also be found here:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cellar/charter/

Best wishes,
Tessa Fallon

____________

From: The IESG <iesg-secretary at ietf.org>
To: "IETF-Announce" <ietf-announce at ietf.org>
Cc: cellar at ietf.org
Subject: WG Review: Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime
transmission (cellar)

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Applications and
Real-Time Area. The IESG has not made any determination yet. The
following draft charter was submitted, and is provided for informational
purposes only. Please send your comments to the IESG mailing list (iesg
at ietf.org) by 2015-11-09.

Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime transmission (cellar)
------------------------------------------------
Current Status: Proposed WG

Chairs:
  Tessa Fallon <tessa.fallon at gmail.com>

Assigned Area Director:
  Ben Campbell <ben at nostrum.com>

Mailing list
  Address: cellar at ietf.org
  To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/cellar
  Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/cellar/

Charter:

The preservation of audiovisual materials faces challenges from
technological obsolescence, analog media deterioration, and the use of
proprietary  formats that lack formal open standards. While obsolescence
and material degradation are widely addressed, the standardization of
open, transparent, self-descriptive, lossless formats remains an
important mission to be undertaken by the open source community.

FFV1 is a lossless video codec and Matroska is an extensible media
container based on EBML (Extensible Binary Meta Language), a binary XML
format. There are open source implementations of both formats, and an
increasing interest in and support for use of FFV1 and Matroska. However,
there are concerns about the sustainability and credibility of existing
specifications for the long-term use of these formats. These existing
specifications require broader review and formalization in order to
encourage widespread adoption.

There is also a need for a lossless audio format to complement the
lossless video codec and container format. FLAC is a lossless audio codec
that has seen widespread adoption in a number of different applications
including archival applications. While there are open source
implementations of the codec, no formal standards for either the codec
itself or its use in container formats currently exist. Review and
formalization of the FLAC codec standard and its use in Matroska
container formats is needed for wider adoption.

Using existing work done by the development communities of Matroska,
FFV1, and FLAC, the Working Group will formalize specifications for these
open and lossless formats. In order to provide authoritative,
standardized specifications for users and developers, the Working Group
will seek consensus throughout the process of refining and formalizing
these standards. Initial specifications can be accessed here:

Specifications:
- FFV1: https://mediaarea.net/temp/ffv1.html
- Matroska: http://matroska.org/technical/specs/index.html
- EBML: http://matroska-org.github.io/libebml/specs.html
- FLAC: https://xiph.org/flac/format.html

Development Versions:
- FFV1: https://github.com/ffmpeg/ffv1
- Matroska:https://github.com/Matroska-Org/foundation-source/blob/master/spectool/specdata.xml
-  EBML: https://github.com/Matroska-Org/ebml-specification

The Working Group will seek consensus and refinements for specifications
for both FFV1 and Matroska in order to provide authoritative,
standardized specifications for users and developers. Backward
compatibility with existing versions 0-3 of the FFV1 and Matroska
specifications will be an important goal, while also reviewing and
refining the current version 4 under active development. Although not
encouraged, non-backwards-compatible changes to the input specifications
will be acceptable if the Working Group determines that the modifications
are required to meet the group's technical objectives, provided that the
reasons for these changes are clearly documented.

Deliverables:
- Informational specification for Matroska container format versions 1, 2
and 3 to IESG for publication
- Standards Track specification for Matroska container format version 4
to IESG for publication
- Informational specification for FFV1 video codec versions 0, 1 and 3 to
IESG for publication
- Standards Track specification for FFV1 video codec version 4 to IESG
for publication
- Standards Track specification for FLAC audio codec to IESG for
publication


Milestones:

TBD
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