International Organization for Standardization

Information technology - Coding of audio-visual objects - Part 23: Symbolic Music Representation - First edition
 N ISO/IEC 14496-23

Annotation

This International Standard defines the Symbolic Music Representation technology. By capitalising the Symbolic Music Representation technology the acronym "SMR" has been derived.

A symbolic representation of music is a logical structure based on symbolic elements representing audiovisual events, the relationship between those events, and aspects related to how those events can be rendered and synchronized with other media types.

Many symbolic representations of music exist, including different styles of notation for chant, classical music, jazz and 20th-century styles; percussion notation; and simplified notations formats for children and vision-impaired readers. MPEG-4 SMR does not standardize one or more of these representations, but instead is an extensible language allowing those representations and many more which share a common underlying structure of music representation.

MPEG-4 SMR allows the synchronization of symbolic music elements with audiovisual events that existing standardized MPEG technology can represent and render.

The SMR technology is composed of different tools, which normative descriptions are in Clauses 7 to 12

— SMR Bitstream: the syntax and semantics of the SMR bitstream.

— Symbolic Music Extensible Format (SM-XF): the syntax and semantics of the SMR format.

— Symbolic Music Synchronization Information (SM-SI): the syntax and semantics of the synchronisation Information between the SMR elements and the other audiovisual elements.