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Abstract-The concept of synchronization is of fundamental importance in multimedia systems and applications. The focus of this work reported in this paper is on olfactory enhanced multimedia, which concerns itself with associating computer generated smell with other media. However, the lingering nature of smell, as opposed to the transitory nature of other media objects that multimedia applications are accustomed to, such as video and audio, means that specific attention needs to be given when synchronizing other media content with olfactory data. Consequently, this paper presents the results of an experimental study carried out to explore and investigate the temporal boundaries within which olfactory data output in an olfactionenhanced multimedia application can be successfully synchronized with other media objects from an end user perspective. Results show the presence of two main synchronization regions, and that olfaction ahead of audiovisual content is more tolerable than olfaction behind content. I. INTRODUCTIONN general, multimedia systems and applications may include any combination of traditional media objects such as text and graphical images, as well as non-traditional media such as audio and video. Synchronization is concerned with defining and maintaining the temporal relationships between two or more correlated media objects that are combined, processed and presented together to produce a multimedia system or application. Because multimedia is essentially about using these multiple media objects to communicate information to users via the component media objects as well as by the relationship between the synchronized media objects [2], [14], [15], [17]-[18], achieving synchronization between them is vital to the success of these systems.Traditional media objects such as text and still images are time-independent as they are static in nature, unlike audio and video which are time-dependent media objects and are presented as a media stream. However, because synchronization defines temporal relations, at least one timedependent media object should be present when specifying multimedia synchronization. For example, a slide show made up of slides and audio commentary involves synchronization between time-independent (the slides) and time-dependent (audio) media objects, while the synchronization of audio with video in everyday TV, videos or DVDs involves synchronization between time-dependent media objects [2]. Likewise, synchronization may be required between the component units within a single time-dependent media object, e.g. between the frames that make up a video or samples of an audio stream. As such, it is common to distinguish between intra-media object synchronization (the temporal relations between the component units within a single time-dependent media object) and inter-media object synchronization (synchronization between different media objects that need to be presented together simultaneously or in sequence).While synchronization has been traditionally associated with Quality of Service (...

Multimedia technology has been widely used in the delivery of instructional material

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