Requirements for an Adaptive Multimedia Presentation System with Contextual Supplemental Support Media

Investigations into the requirements for a practical adaptive multimedia presentation system have led the writers to propose the use of a video segmentation process that provides contextual supplementary updates produced by users. Supplements consisting of tailored segments are dynamically inserted into previously stored material in response to questions from users. A proposal for the use of this technique is presented in the context of personalisation within a Virtual Learning Environment. During the investigation, a brief survey of advanced adaptive approaches revealed that adaptation may be enhanced by use of manually generated metadata, automated or semi-automated use of metadata by stored context dependent ontology hierarchies that describe the semantics of the learning domain. The use of neural networks or fuzzy logic filtering is a technique for future investigation. A prototype demonstrator is under construction

Implementing adaptability in the standard reference model for intelligent multimedia presentation systems

This paper discusses the implementation of adaptability in environments that are based on the Standard Reference Model for Intelligent Multimedia Presentation Systems. This adaptability is explored in the context of style sheets, which are represented in such formats as DSSSL. The use of existing public standards and tools for this implementation of style sheet-based adaptability is described. The Berlage environment is presented, which integrates these standards and tools into a complete storage-to-presentation hypermedia environment. The integration of the SRM into the Berlage environment is introduced in this work. This integration illustrates the issues involved in implementing adaptability in the model

Supporting Adaptive and Adaptable Hypermedia Presentation Semantics

Having the content of a presentation adapt to the needs, resources and prior activities of a user can be an important benefit of electronic documents. While part of this adaptation is related to the encodings of individual data streams, much of the adaptation can/should be guided by the semantics in and among the objects of the presentation. The semantics involved in having hypermedia presentations adapt can be divided between adaptive hypermedia, which adapts autonomously, and adaptable hypermedia, which requires presentationexternal intervention to be adapted. Understanding adaptive and adaptable hypermedia and the differences between them helps in determining the best manner with which to have a particular hypermedia implementation adapt to the varying circumstances of its presentation. The choice of which type of semantics to represent can affect speed of the database management system processing them. This paper reflects on research and implementation approaches toward both adaptive and adaptable hypermedia and how they apply to specifying the semantics involved in hypermedia authoring and processing. We look at adaptive approaches by considering CMIF and SMIL. The adaptable approaches are represented by the SGML-related collection of formats and the Standard Reference Model (SRM) for IPMS are also reviewed. Based on our experience with both adaptive and adaptable hypermedia, we offer recommendations on how each approach can be supported at the data storage level

Face modeling and animation language for MPEG-4 XMT framework

This paper proposes FML, an XML-based face modeling and animation language. FML provides a structured content description method for multimedia presentations based on face animation. The language can be used as direct input to compatible players, or be compiled within MPEG-4 XMT framework to create MPEG-4 presentations. The language allows parallel and sequential action description, decision-making and dynamic event-based scenarios, model configuration, and behavioral template definition. Facial actions include talking, expressions, head movements, and low-level MPEG-4 FAPs. The ShowFace and iFACE animation frameworks are also reviewed as example FML-based animation systems

The Use of SMIL: Multimedia Research Currently Applied on a Global Scale

This paper describes the current use of the multimedia standard SMIL. SMIL features that relate to active areas of multimedia research are discussed. SMIL current implementation in existing browsers is described. Examples from the Web of SMIL applications representing different types of multimedia are presented. These discussions together provide an overview of how SMIL currently addresses the needs of multimedia distributed on the Web

Processing Structured Hypermedia : A Matter of Style

With the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early nineties, hypermedia has become the uniform interface to the wide variety of information sources available over the Internet. The full potential of the Web, however, can only be realized by building on the strengths of its underlying research fields. This book describes the areas of hypertext, multimedia, electronic publishing and the World Wide Web and points out fundamental similarities and differences in approaches towards the processing of information. It gives an overview of the dominant models and tools developed in these fields and describes the key interrelationships and mutual incompatibilities. In addition to a formal specification of a selection of these models, the book discusses the impact of the models described on the software architectures that have been developed for processing hypermedia documents. Two example hypermedia architectures are described in more detail: the DejaVu object-oriented hypermedia framework, developed at the VU, and CWI's Berlage environment for time-based hypermedia document transformations

A Tool for Creating, Editing and Tracking Virtual SMIL Presentations

The ability to easily find, edit and re-use content adds significant value to that content. When the content consists of complex, multimedia objects, both the difficulty of implementing such capabilities and the added-value are multiplied. The work described here is based on an archive of SMIL presentations, built and indexed using tools, developed by the authors, which enabled digitized videos of lectures to be automatically synchronized with their corresponding PowerPoint slides and recorded metadata about the lecture context, origin of the video and slide files and the temporal alignment information. As the archive grew, it became clear that the ability to edit, update or customize existing presentations by deleting, adding or replacing specific slides without re-filming the entire lecture was required. This paper describes an application that provides such functionality by enabling the easy editing, repurposing and tracking of presentations for web-based distance learning

Enhancing Social Sharing of Videos: Fragment, Annotate, Enrich, and Share

Media consumption is an inherently social activity, serving to communicate ideas and emotions across both small- and large-scale communities. The migration of the media experience to personal computers retains social viewing, but typically only via a non-social, strictly personal interface. This paper presents an architecture and implementation for media content selection, content (re)organization, and content sharing within a user community that is heterogeneous in terms of both participants and devices. In addition, our application allows the user to enrich the content as a differentiated personalization activity targeted to his/her peer-group. We describe the goals, architecture and implementation of our system in this paper. In order to validate our results, we also present results from two user studies involving disjoint sets of test participants

Realizing the Hydrogen Economy through Semantic Web Technologies

The FUSION (Fuel Cell Understanding through Semantic Inferencing, Ontologies and Nanotechnology) project applies, extends, and combines Semantic Web technologies and image analysis techniques to develop a knowledge management system to optimize the design of fuel cells