Distributed multimedia systems

Multimedia systems will allow professionals worldwide to collaborate more effectively and to travel substantially less. But for multimedia systems to be effective, a good systems infrastructure is essential. In particular, support is needed for global and consistent sharing of information, for long-distance, high-bandwidth multimedia interpersonal communication, greatly enhanced reliability and availability, and security. These systems will also need to be easily usable by lay computer users. \ud In this paper we explore the operating system support that these multimedia systems must have in order to do the job properly

Principles of Multimedia News Systems for Business Applications

In the past few years considerable demand for business oriented multimedia information systems has developed. A multimedia information system is one that can create, import, integrate, store, retrieve, edit, and delete two or more types of media materials in digital form, such as audio, image, full-motion video, and text information. Multimedia information systems play a central role in many business activities. They represent a very special class complex computing systems. This paper surveys a special type of multimedia information systems: multimedia news systems. Multimedia news systems deal with architectures to manage complex multimedia news databases, online presentation and distribution services or the integration of several existing services to meta-services using intelligent news retrieval engines. The leading presentation platform in multimedia news presentation is news networks providing television services and Internet content distribution. The primary focus is on advanced multimedia news systems infrastructure, document standards, application architecture and principles for multimedia news on the Web that suggest long-term trends in this increasingly important area.multimedia, information systems, business applications

Analysis of a Multimedia Stream using Stochastic Process Algebra

It is now well recognised that the next generation of distributed systems will be distributed multimedia systems. Central to multimedia systems is quality of service, which defines the non-functional requirements on the system. In this paper we investigate how stochastic process algebra can be used in order to determine the quality of service properties of distributed multimedia systems. We use a simple multimedia stream as our basic example. We describe it in the Stochastic Process Algebra PEPA and then we analyse whether the stream satisfies a set of quality of service parameters: throughput, end-to-end latency, jitter and error rates

Operating-system support for distributed multimedia

Multimedia applications place new demands upon processors, networks and operating systems. While some network designers, through ATM for example, have considered revolutionary approaches to supporting multimedia, the same cannot be said for operating systems designers. Most work is evolutionary in nature, attempting to identify additional features that can be added to existing systems to support multimedia. Here we describe the Pegasus project's attempt to build an integrated hardware and operating system environment from\ud the ground up specifically targeted towards multimedia

J-measure based hybrid pruning for complexity reduction in classification rules

Prism is a modular classification rule generation method based on the ‘separate and conquer’ approach that is alternative to the rule induction approach using decision trees also known as ‘divide and conquer’. Prism often achieves a similar level of classification accuracy compared with decision trees, but tends to produce a more compact noise tolerant set of classification rules. As with other classification rule generation methods, a principle problem arising with Prism is that of overfitting due to over-specialised rules. In addition, over-specialised rules increase the associated computational complexity. These problems can be solved by pruning methods. For the Prism method, two pruning algorithms have been introduced recently for reducing overfitting of classification rules - J-pruning and Jmax-pruning. Both algorithms are based on the J-measure, an information theoretic means for quantifying the theoretical information content of a rule. Jmax-pruning attempts to exploit the J-measure to its full potential because J-pruning does not actually achieve this and may even lead to underfitting. A series of experiments have proved that Jmax-pruning may outperform J-pruning in reducing overfitting. However, Jmax-pruning is computationally relatively expensive and may also lead to underfitting. This paper reviews the Prism method and the two existing pruning algorithms above. It also proposes a novel pruning algorithm called Jmid-pruning. The latter is based on the J-measure and it reduces overfitting to a similar level as the other two algorithms but is better in avoiding underfitting and unnecessary computational effort. The authors conduct an experimental study on the performance of the Jmid-pruning algorithm in terms of classification accuracy and computational efficiency. The algorithm is also evaluated comparatively with the J-pruning and Jmax-pruning algorithms

Reconfigurable Mobile Multimedia Systems

This paper discusses reconfigurability issues in lowpower hand-held multimedia systems, with particular emphasis on energy conservation. We claim that a radical new approach has to be taken in order to fulfill the requirements - in terms of processing power and energy consumption - of future mobile applications. A reconfigurable systems-architecture in combination with a QoS driven operating system is introduced that can deal with the inherent dynamics of a mobile system. We present the preliminary results of studies we have done on reconfiguration in hand-held mobile computers: by having reconfigurable media streams, by using reconfigurable processing modules and by migrating functions

Communication systems supporting multimedia multi-user applications

Multimedia multi-user applications are becoming more and more important. Intensive research is underway on the design of protocols and protocol entities for future communication systems supporting multimedia multi-user applications. The development of a service description ensures that protocol designs actually produce the required functional behavior. The authors explain the approach to the description of a multimedia multi-user service. An example illustrates the use of the service description in the design of communication systems. Next, they present the basic requirements of multimedia and multi-user communications. A call model underlies and structures the service description. Finally, the authors describe the service in terms of service element

Systems for the Nineties - Distributed Multimedia Systems

We live at the dawn of the information age. The capabilities of computers to store and look up information are only just beginning to be exploited. As little as ten years ago, practically all the information stored in computers was entered and retrieved in the form of text. Today, we are just starting to use other means of communicating information between people and machines -- computers can now scan images, they can record sound, they can produce synthesized speech, and they can show two- and three-dimensional images of spatial data. The realization that we are still at the beginning of the information age comes when we notice the vast difference between the way in which people interact with each other and the way in which people can interact with (or through) machines. When people communicate, they tend to use speech, gestures, touch, even smell; they draw pictures on the white board, they use text, pictures, photos, graphs, sometimes even video presentations. nterpersonal communication is truly multimedia communication in that it makes use of all our senses

PANEL: Challenges for multimedia/multimodal research in the next decade

The multimedia and multimodal community is witnessing an explosive transformation in the recent years with major societal impact. With the unprecedented deployment of multimedia devices and systems, multimedia research is critical to our abilities and prospects in advancing state-of-theart technologies and solving real-world challenges facing the society and the nation. To respond to these challenges and further advance the frontiers of the field of multimedia, this panel will discuss the challenges and visions that may guide future research in the next ten years