MPEG Developments

MPEG-A: Interactive Music Application Format

Sonic Visualiser with IM AF support featuring automatic chords extraction aligned in time with lyrics:
Source code
Executable for windows & mac os/x
La fuga an IM AF (.ima) song

Spanish pop band 'Diɘcinueve', featured in TV and press, is the first band to use Sonic Visualiser with IM AF support that lets music fans remix and share the group's latest single 'La fuga' in endless new forms. Thanks to Emilio Molina Martínez.

HTML5 IM AF Player ver. 1 by Giacomo Herrero.
Featuring lyrics & album picture.
HTML5 IM AF Player ver. 2 by Luke Barlow.
Featuring robustness & zoom in/out.
"HTML5 IM AF Player ver. 3" by Colin Gunder Dodds.
Featuring chords extraction & uploading your own re-mixes.

We would like to further enhance IM AF with new technologies. Topics for student projects available (at all levels UG/MSc/PhD) to be taken are given below. Programming languages background is a prerequisite as well as willingness to learn new ones, e.g., HTML5. Furthermore, students are expected to develop knowledge and skills on working with latest standards (MPEG, EBU, DMP) as well as acquire commercial and market perspective of music technologies for internet, broadcasting and mobile applications.

• Lyrics extraction and/or highlighting for karaoke apps
• Rights tracking for fair artists remuneration
• Dynamic adaptive audio streaming
• 3D audio mixing
• Second screen music recommendation
• Vocaloid animation

If you would like to involve in this project please contact p.kudumakis at qmul.ac.uk

Projects by students

• Eugenio Oñate (C4DM)
  IM AF Encoder: Multi-track audio
  Proof of concept
  MSc Thesis, Aug. 2012
  DMRN+7 Paper, Dec. 2012

• Costantino Taglialatela (C4DM visitor)
  IM AF Encoder: Still Pictures, Rules, Presets, Groups, EQ
  Integration in Sonic Visualiser
  BSc Thesis, Jul. 2013
  53rd AES Paper, Jan. 2014

• Jesús C. García (Univ. of Malaga)
  IM AF Codec: Lyrics, Metadata, Dynamic Volume, URL
  Integration in Sonic Visualiser
  BSc Thesis, Jun. 2014 - in Spanish
  53rd AES Paper, Jan. 2014

• Giacomo Herrero (Univ. of Malaga)
  An HTML5 IM AF Player
  On-line demos: Serverside / Clientside
  CMMR'13 Paper, Oct. 2013

Related publications

• Jesús C. García, Panos Kudumakis, Isabel Barbancho, Lorenzo J. Tardón and Mark Sandler, 'Enabling interactive and interoperable semantic music applications', Springer Handbook for Systematic Musicology, Apr. 2014. In press.

• Jesús C. García, Costantino Taglialatela, Panos Kudumakis, Lorenzo J. Tardón, Isabel Barbancho and Mark Sandler, 'Interactive music applications by MPEG-A support in Sonic Visualiser', AES 53rd International Conference on Semantic Audio, London, UK, 27-29 Jan. 2014.

• Giacomo Herrero, Panos Kudumakis, Lorenzo J. Tardon, Isabel Barbancho, Mark Sandler, 'An HTML5 Interactive (MPEG-A IM AF) Music Player', 10th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR'13), Marseille, France, 15-18 Oct. 2013.

• Rebecca Stewart, Panos Kudumakis, and Mark Sandler, 'Interactive Music Applications and Standards', in 'Exploring Music Contents', Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 20-30, Vol. 6684, Springer Berlin Heidelberg (ISBN 978-3-642-23125-4), August 2011. Editors: S. Ystad, M. Aramaki, R. Kronland-Martinet & K. Jensen.

• Panos Kudumakis, 'MP3: something's gotta change!', in 'Audio! Magazine', pp. 6, Vol. 1, Issue 3, April 2011. Editors: Paul Curzon, Mathieu Barthet and Simon Dixon.

• Inseon Jang, Panos Kudumakis, Mark Sandler, Kyeongok Kang, 'The MPEG Interactive Music Application Format Standard', IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, pp. 150-154, Vol. 28, Issue 1, Jan. 2011.

• Panos Kudumakis, Inseon Jang and Mark Sandler, 'A New Interactive MPEG Format for the Music Industry', 7th International Symposium on Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval (CMMR'10), Málaga, Spain, 21-24 June, 2010.

Inspirations

• IM AF: What's next?
• IM AF study by Tracy Redhead