The discussion from Monday Audio plenary (see Section 4) was continued on Tuesday afternoon. The Chair summarized the major issues from the discussion as follows:
Signing an NDA can be a barrier to participation in CEs. On the other hand, an NDA protects the RM proponent’s Reference Quality encoder library code.
For each CE, an API into the Reference Quality encoder code is made available on a CE-by-CE basis. Furthermore, the Reference Quality encoder code could be made available with a “block diagram” API. The API is defined by header files that support linking with the Reference Quality encoder library.
A Reference Quality encoder could be made available via two mechanisms:
The RM proponent links an object module provided by the CE proponent (that implements the tool under test) into the Reference Quality encoder library and provides bitstreams to the CE proponent.
The RM proponent provides to the CE proponent the Reference Quality encoder library and the CE proponent links the library, runs the CE experiment and obtains the bitstreams. This may require executing an NDA.