Synchronization of Multi-Sourced Multimedia Data for Heterogeneous Target Systems

Abstract

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. 1 Problem Overvie