The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) was a non-profit corporation founded in December 2000, by
Apple Computer,
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
,
Kasenna,
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
, and
Sun Microsystems.
Its stated mission was to accelerate the market adoption of open standards for streaming and progressive download of
rich media over all types of
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.
...
s (IP). It was an alliance with representatives from various points of the streaming work-flow.
At the time ISMA was created, standards already existed for audio and video codecs (e.g.
MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...
) and for real time streaming transport over IP networks (e.g.
RTP). ISMA worked on selecting profiles, describing payload formats, and resolving various options of these standards. ISMA specifications typically adopted existing specifications. However, when specifications did not exist, the ISMA could create them. ISMA also performed interoperability testing, allowing its members to ensure that their products conformed to ISMA standards and interoperate.
Specifications
ISMA released several specifications for the transport of rich media over IP:
* ISMA 1.0 - detailing how to stream
MPEG-4 Part 2
MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/ IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine ...
video (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile) over IP networks
* ISMA 2.0 - detailing how to stream
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video and
HE-AAC audio over IP networks
*
ISMACryp - specifying an
end-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecommunications service providers, telecom providers, Internet ...
system for ISMA 1.0 and 2.0 streams
* ISMA Closed Captioning - specifying how to carry
closed caption
Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio po ...
(line 21) data as a third stream over an IP network
References
{{reflist
External links
ISMA Official Website(archived from the original on December 19, 2011)
ISMA technical specificationsat MPEG industry forum
Internet protocols
Non-profit corporations
Organizations established in 2000