Capsule Reviews

2004 Computer journal  
Different approaches that transmit multimedia information via the internet have already been proposed in the literature. In multimedia Systems, however, it is vital to integrate several media streams (e.g. video, audio, text and image). Moreover, in Multimedia-on-Demand (MOD) systems, it is necessary to have VCR-like user interactions (e.g. reversing the presentation sequence, skipping forward or backwards several media units, freezing the presentation for a while and then restarting it, and
more » ... ling down or up the presentation speed). Such requirements when transmitting multimedia information and allowing users' interactions cause MOD systems to face major problems. For example, how to synchronize multimedia information so that associated information units, which are sent simulateneously, do indeed arrive simultaneously at the client site. Since transmission delays remain largely unpredictable and uncontrollable, synchronization control of an interactive MOD system is complicated and difficult. This paper proposes several control schemes to handle transmission and user interactions in an MOD system. This is done by using several buffers to control the information (especially the feedback information provided by the clients to the peered server according to its buffered status; the server then uses such information to control the transmission). These buffers are managed by control schemes so that they don't overflow or underflow. The authors demonstrate the feasibility of their control schemes by providing some performance measurements.
doi:10.1093/comjnl/47.2.137 fatcat:vbufakrx5badzb7rx6vsfaquim