Synchronization of multi-sourced multimedia data for heterogeneous target systems

Abstract

Accessing multimedia information in a networked environment introduces problems to an application designer that don't exist when the same information is fetched locally. These problems include “competing” for the allocation of network resources across applications, synchronizing data arrivals from various sources within an application, and supporting multiple data representations across heterogeneous hosts. In this paper, we present a general framework for addressing these problems that is based on the assumption that time-sensitive data can only be controlled by having the application, the operating system(s) and a set of active, intelligent information object coordinate their activities based on an explicit specification of resource, synchronization, and representation information. After presenting the general framework, we describe a document specification structure and two active system components that cooperatively provide support for synchronization and data-transformation problems in a networked multimedia environment.