This book is a clear and comprehensive survey of multimedia system design for a networked world. It's also a perfect companion for multimedia server designers as well as the multimedia application developer ... or anyone building the 'best of breed' products and services that scale to the Internet. Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO Novell, Inc. This is a book on an extremely timely subject. With coming broadband access to the home, there will be an explosion in demand for multimedia streaming applications. This book will be a "must" read for anyone designing the servers that will support them. Don Towsley, Dept. of Computer Science University of Massachusetts- Amherst This book will undoubtedly satisfy the needs of application developers, server designers, integrators, and service providers, as it provides end-to-end, top-down coverage: from application-specific issues to low-level components. Inside, the authors offer specific design, development, and implementation approaches that take into account the complexity of the environments in which multimedia servers operate. You'll learn which techniques are best suited for different kinds of applications and different kinds of networks. You'll master the challenges associated with resource scheduling, collaborative computing, session set-up, and distributed storage. Most importantly, you'll discover how to put all of these solutions to work as part of a coherent strategy aimed at exploiting economies of scale and meeting quality of service requirements. Features Presents optimized design algorithms developed by the authors and other leading researchers. Deals comprehensively with the systems supporting the large-scale storage, retrieval, and distribution of audio and video data. Balances the coverage of current technologies with forward-looking discussions to help you devise a sustainable, evolvable solution. Covers key issues in video-on-demand and other multimedia systems: resource scheduling, local caching, interactivity, architectural strategies, and more.

This second edition provides easy access to important concepts, issues and technology trends in the field of multimedia technologies, systems, techniques, and applications. Over 1,100 heavily-illustrated pages — including 80 new entries — present concise overviews of all aspects of software, systems, web tools and hardware that enable video, audio and developing media to be shared and delivered electronically.

This book addresses the changing role of networks and the evolving structure of an Infrastructure Superhighway. The requirements for leadership in telecommunications are reviewed from different viewpoints: Network operators, equipment manufacturers, software developers and user organizations. Emphasis is placed on multimedia and what multimedia solutions would mean to telephone utilities and endusers. Based on extensive research undertaken in Europe, US and Japan, Dimitris Chorafas identifies new domains of applications, presents the breakthroughs which have currently been achieved and outlines the systems solutions necessary to fruitfully exploit new technology.

Readings in Multimedia Computing and Networking captures the broad areas of research and developments in this burgeoning field, distills the key findings, and makes them accessible to professionals, researchers, and students alike. For the first time, the most influential and innovative papers on these topics are presented in a cohesive form, giving shape to the diverse area of multimedia computing. The seminal moments are recorded by a dozen visionaries in the field and each contributing editor provides a context for their area of research by way of a thoughtful, focused chapter introduction. The volume editors, Kevin Jeffay and HongJiang Zhang, offer further incisive interpretations of past and present developments in this area, including those within media and content processing, operating systems, and networking support for multimedia. This book will provide you with a sound understanding of the theoretical and practical issues at work in the field's continuing evolution.* Offers an in-depth look at the technical challenges in multimedia and provides real and potential solutions that promise to expand the role of multimedia in business, entertainment, and education.* Examines in Part One issues at the heart of multimedia processes: the means by which multimedia data are coded, compressed, indexed, retrieved, and otherwise manipulated.* Examines in Part Two the accommodation of these processes by storage systems, operating systems, network protocols, and applications.* Written by leading researchers, the introductions give shape to a field that is continually defining itself and place the key research findings in context to those who need to understand the state-of-the art developments.

Multimedia Systems discusses the basic characteristics of multimedia operating systems, networking and communication, and multimedia middleware systems. The overall goal of the book is to provide a broad understanding of multimedia systems and applications in an integrated manner: a multimedia application and its user interface must be developed in an integrated fashion with underlying multimedia middleware, operating systems, networks, security, and multimedia devices. Fundamental characteristics of multimedia operating and distributed communication systems are presented, especially scheduling algorithms and other OS supporting approaches for multimedia applications with soft-real-time deadlines, multimedia file systems and servers with their decision algorithms for data placement, scheduling and buffer management, multimedia communication, transport, and streaming protocols, services with their error control, congestion control and other Quality of Service aware and adaptive algorithms, synchronization services with their skew control methods, and group communication with their group coordinating algorithms and other distributed services.

Multimedia computing (MMC) is becoming an increasingly popular technology. The widespread use of personal computers, together with significant scientific and economic breakthroughs in multimedia technology have begun to make multimedia a practical paradigm of end user computing, from the interactive text and graphics model that has developed since the 1950s into one that is more compatible with the digital electronic world of the next century. Although the field of multimedia computing is more than 30 years old, the rapidly changing personal computing industry has become obsessed with a set of technologies, products and practices that falls under the rubric of multimedia computing. As the industry continues to race toward the 21st century, it is becoming more and more difficult for people who are interested, but not directly involved in the development of MMC to identify and understand the important and key issues that underlie this topic. Multimedia Computing: Preparing for the 21st Century addresses the modern environment of MMC by providing you with a contemporary and extensive source book for issues surrounding MMC today and trends and issues related to the next generation of end user computing utilizing the technologies of multimedia.

Several works on multimedia storage appear in literature today, but very little if any, have been devoted to handling long duration video retrieval, over large scale networks. Distributed retrieval of multimedia documents, especially the long duration documents, is an imperative step in rendering high-quality, high-fidelity, and cost-effective services for network service providers. Distributed Multimedia Retrieval Strategies for Large Scale Networked Systems presents an up-to-date research status in the domain of distributed video retrieval. This professional book will include several different techniques that are in place for long duration video retrieval. An experimentally tested technology under the JINI platform, demonstrates a practical working system which serves as a feasibility study, as well as the first step in realizing such a technology.