SMPTE ST 2071 is a suite of standards published by the

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...

(SMPTE) that define a

framework A framework is a generic term commonly referring to an essential supporting structure which other things are built on top of. Framework may refer to: Computing * Application framework, used to implement the structure of an application for an op ...

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technology ...

, and method of

service discovery Service discovery is the process of automatically detecting devices and services on a computer network. This reduces the need for manual configuration by users and administrators. A service discovery protocol (SDP) is a network protocol that hel ...

for the control of

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...

s within an

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

. The standards focus on the interoperability and discoverability of objects within the

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

, and treat media as

first-class citizen In programming language design, a first-class citizen (also type, object, entity, or value) in a given programming language is an entity which supports all the operations generally available to other entities. These operations typically include b ...

. The standard also describes a

programming methodology In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software deve ...

that allows objects to describe their behaviors ( features) to other objects over the network and allows objects to change their behavior dynamically at runtime. Application developers developing to the SMPTE ST 2071 standards focus on writing their applications to the behaviors they wish to support and not the object or

class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...

of object that implements those behaviors.

Media as a first-class citizen

The SMPTE ST 2071

standards Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...

define media as a

, changing the focus from controlling devices and services to controlling media. This paradigm shift provides a more natural method of

discovering Discovery is the act of detecting something new, or something previously unrecognized as meaningful. With reference to sciences and academic disciplines, discovery is the observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and providing ...

, managing, and manipulating media as it harmonizes the way media is controlled with the way that it is conceptually perceived.

Features as first-class citizens

The SMPTE ST 2071 standards define a development methodology that elevates features to a

status, allowing for those features to be decoupled from the

s that implement them. The standard defines capabilities as uniquely identified features that may be defined through normative prose and/or

interface definition language interface description language or interface definition language (IDL), is a generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown language. IDLs describe an inter ...

s, such as

OMG IDL The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sys ...

WSDL The Web Services Description Language (WSDL ) is an XML-based interface description language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a web service. The acronym is also used for any specific WSDL description of a web service (also ...

, and consequently documented or registered within a repository to foster feature-level interoperability within heterogeneous environments.

Interoperability and new applications

The interoperable exchange of media requires common file formats, compression/encoding techniques, transport mechanisms, semantics, and a common means by which media can be discovered, located, accessed, and managed. The SMPTE ST 2071 suite of standards defines an open protocol for the control of objects within an Internet of Things with provisions for the representation and control of media as a first-class citizen. The SMPTE ST 2071 Media & Device Control standard also defines a new programming methodology by which complex behaviors can be modeled as sets of uniquely identified features, known as capabilities, and a framework by which the endpoints exposing these capabilities can be made discoverable. As with media, SMPTE ST 2071 elevates capabilities (features) to a first-class citizen status, allowing for those capabilities to be decoupled from the objects that expose them. This new methodology can be used to simplify existing applications by facilitating the discovery of media services within a local area network and/or the Cloud. New applications may also be written to control mediacentric objects (devices and services) without forehand knowledge of the implementation of those objects. Commands may also be embedded within media streams to facilitate the initiation of action within the receiving system if the capabilities are exposed by the receiving system or can be ignored if they are not. This may prove useful for the control of objects on the receiving end, such as the control of tactile devices or some yet to be identified application.

Standards documents

* SMPTE ST 2071-1 – Media Device Control Framework standard defines a platform and application layer protocol agnostic framework for the control of devices and services on Internet Protocol networks. * SMPTE ST 2071-2 – Media Device Control Protocol standard defines a WS-I Basic Profile 1.2 compliant Web Services protocol with provisions for IP traffic classification to help with the implementation of network-based QoS * SMPTE ST 2071-3 – Media Device Control Discovery standard defines an application of the DNS-based Service Discovery protocol that is highly scalable, scaling from the smallest network to Internet scales using the

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

and adds support for the separation of the

and name resolution DNS infrastructures. Thereby preventing service discovery operations from negatively impacting the performance of name resolution. Clients use the service discovery process to discover the

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

s for each endpoint representing a uniquely identified feature, aka, Capability, that is registered for an implementing device or service.

References

{{SMPTE standards Internet of things Film and video technology SMPTE standards