MING-I: a distributed interactive multimedia document development mechanism

Abstract

The next generation of interactive multimedia documents can contain both static media, e.g., text, graph, image, and continuous media, e.g., audio and video, and can provide user interactions in distributed environments. However, the temporal information of multimedia documents cannot be described using traditional document structures, e.g., Open Document Architecture (ODA) and Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML); the continuous transmission of media units also raises some new synchronization problems, which have not been met before, for processing user interactions. Thus, developing a distributed interactive multimedia document system should resolve the issues of document model, presentation control architecture, and control scheme. In this paper, we (i) propose a new multimedia document model that contains the logical structure, the layout structure, and the temporal structure to formally describe multimedia documents, and (ii) point out main interaction-based synchronization problems, and propose a control architecture and a token-based control scheme to solve these interaction-based synchronization problems. Based on the proposed document model, control architecture, and control scheme, a distributed interactive multimedia document development mechanism, which is called MING-I, is developed on SUN workstations.

A synchronization model for hypermedia documents navigation

“…The result is a formalism suitable for designing any multimedia composition. The work [6] proposes a multimedia document model containing temporal information that can be described using traditional document structures (e.g., SGML). The model contains the logical structure, the layout structure, and the temporal structure to formally describe multimedia objects.…”

Synchronization Schemes for Controlling VCR-Like User Interactions in Interactive Multimedia-on-Demand (MOD) Systems

“…(ii) If an Actor is slower than the master Actor, then it modifies its presentation sequence number to be equal to the master Actor's. 2 That is, it discards the presentation of some redundant media units to keep pace with the master Actor.…”

“…background music, then video or other media will be the master medium. 2 In our implementation, each client Actor has a presentation counter that keeps the sequence number of the next media unit to be presented. Thus the modification of sequence number can be achieved by modifying the value of the presentation counter.…”

“…With these user interactions, a user can (1) reverse the presentation sequence, (2) skip several media units, either forward or backward, (3) freeze the presentation for a while, and then restart and (4) scale the presentation speed, either to speed-up or slow-down. The major difficulty for providing user interactions is that user interactions are issued randomly and unpredictably during a multimedia presentation [2,3]. The system cannot predict when a user interaction will be issued and what type it would be.…”

“…47, No. 2,2004 interactive MOD system in this paper. In our control schemes, several buffers are used to compensate the jitter phenomenon, which is done by storing some received media units temporarily before their presentations are commenced.…”