MPEG's latest effort, the Multimedia Content Description Interface, or MPEG
-7, promises to standardise descriptions of Audio-visual material to allow
universal indexing, retrieval, filtering, control, and other activities sup
ported by rich meta-data. We give an overview of the current conception of
MPEG-7, outline responses to the Call for Proposals, give examples how curr
ent practice could be incorporated into the MPEG-7 framework, and offer a f
ew thoughts on potential directions and solutions for the standard.