End-User Construction and Configuration of Distributed Multimedia Applications

Distributed multimedia applications supported by a global electronic infrastructure have tremendous potential for providing users with customized communication and computation environments. Since communication and computation requirements vary by context and change dynamically, it is unlikely that off-the-shelf applications will anticipate the needs of all users. Therefore, empowering end-users to create their own customized applications for both communication and computation is an important challenge. This dissertation presents several mechanisms that enable end-users to create and configure distributed multimedia applications, including end-users construction direct manipulation graphical users interface (GUIs) and application management of distributed multimedia applications over the Internet

Captions Based On Speaker Identification

Disclosed herein is a mechanism for generating and providing captions based on speaker identification. In some instances, the mechanism can be used to determine intervals where a single-speaker is speaking within particular image frames to assist the task of manual captioning or manual transcription. In some instances, the mechanism can be used to provide an awareness or indication of speaker turn-changes in captions, where a particular word or phrase can be grouped by particular speaker. In some instances, the mechanism can be used to provide an awareness or indication of speaker position and identity information corresponding to the speaker