This Recommendation | International Standard¹ defines, in an extensible manner, syntaxes and methods for the remote interrogation and optional modification of JPEG 2000 codestreams and files in accordance with their definition in Rec. ITU-T T.800 | ISO/IEC 15444-1 and other members of the Rec. ITU-T T.8xx | ISO/IEC 15444-x family of Recommendations | Standards.

In this Recommendation | International Standard, the defined syntaxes and methods are referred to as the JPEG 2000 Interactive Protocol, "JPIP", and interactive applications using JPIP are referred to as "JPIP systems."

JPIP specifies a protocol consisting of a structured series of interactions between a client and a server by means of which image file metadata, structure and partial or whole image codestreams can be exchanged in a manner that avoids or minimises the communication of information not required by client. This Recommendation | International Standard includes definitions of the semantics and values to be exchanged, and suggests how these can be passed using a variety of existing network transports.

With JPIP, the following tasks can be accomplished in varying, compatible ways:
– the exchange of capabilities;
– the negotiation of capabilities to use in a session;
– the request and transfer of the following elements from a variety of containers, such as JPEG 2000 files, JPEG 2000 codestreams and other container files:
• selective data segments;
• selective and defined structures;
• parts of an image or its related metadata.