This volume addresses fundamental design issues and research topics related to multimedia systems, and provides a comprehensive study of the issues. Topics covered include: distributed multimedia databases and computing; multiparadigmatic information retrieval; modelling and analysis of distributed multimedia systems; OS support for distributed multimedia systems; multimedia communications and networking; multimedia digital libraries and mail systems; multimedia human-computer interaction; multimedia applications for CSCW, distant education, electronic commerce teleconferencing and telemedicine; visual and multidimensional languages for multimedia applications; multimedia workflows; and multimedia stream synchronization. In addition, a number of tutorial and overview articles are included so that the volume strikes a balance between introductory tutorials and advanced topics.

Resource Management for Distributed Multimedia Systems addresses the problems and challenges of handling several continuous- media data streams in networked multimedia environments. The work demonstrates how resource management mechanisms can be integrated into a stream handling system. The resulting system includes functions for Quality of Service (QoS) calculations, scheduling, determination of resource requirements, and methods to reduce resource requirements. The work explains the following: a suitable system architecture and resource management scheme that allows for the provision and enforcement of QoS guarantee, resource scheduling mechanisms for CPU and buffer space, mechanisms to measure and collect resource requirements, methods to extend resource management to future scenarios by allowing the reservation of resources in advance and offering sealing mechanisms. . Resource Management for Distributed Multimedia Systems is a comprehensive view of resource management for a broad technical audience that includes computer scientists and engineers involved in developing multimedia applications.

Multimedia computing has emerged in the last few years as a major area of research. Multimedia computer systems have opened a wide range of applications by combining a variety of information sources, such as voice, graphics, animation, images, audio and full-motion video. Looking at the big picture, multimedia can be viewed as the merging of three industries: computer, communications, and broadcasting industries. Research and development efforts can be divided into two areas. As the first area of research, much effort has been centered on the stand-alone multimedia workstation and associated software systems and tools, such as music composition, computer-aided education and training, and interactive video. However, the combination of multimedia computing with distributed systems offers even greater potential. New applications based on distributed multimedia systems include multimedia information systems, collaborative and video conferencing systems, on-demand multimedia services, and distance learning. Multimedia Systems and Techniques is one of two volumes published by Kluwer, both of which provide a broad introduction into this fast moving area. The book covers fundamental concepts and techniques used in multimedia systems. The topics include multimedia objects and related models, multimedia compression techniques and standards, multimedia interfaces, multimedia storage techniques, multimedia communication and networking, multimedia synchronization techniques, multimedia information systems, scheduling in multimedia systems, and video indexing and retrieval techniques. Multimedia Systems and Techniques, together with its companion volume, Multimedia Tools and Applications, is intended for anyone involved in multimedia system design and applications and can be used as a textbook for advanced courses on multimedia.

MULTIMEDIA: ALGORITHMS, STANDARDS, AND INDUSTRY PRACTICES brings together the different aspects of a modern multimedia pipeline from content creation, compression, distribution and digital rights management. Drawing on their experience in industry, Havaldar and Medioni discuss the issues involved in engineering an end-to-end multimedia pipeline and give plenty of real-world examples including digital television, IPTV, mobile deployments, and digital cinema pipelines. The text also contains up-to-date coverage of current issues in multimedia, including a discussion of MPEG-4 and the current progress in MPEG-21 to create a framework where seamless data exchange will be possible. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

In 1992 we initiated a research project on large scale distributed computing systems (LSDCS). It was a collaborative project involving research institutes and universities in Bologna, Grenoble, Lausanne, Lisbon, Rennes, Rocquencourt, Newcastle, and Twente. The World Wide Web had recently been developed at CERN, but its use was not yet as common place as it is today and graphical browsers had yet to be developed. It was clear to us (and to just about everyone else) that LSDCS comprising several thousands to millions of individual computer systems (nodes) would be coming into existence as a consequence both of technological advances and the demands placed by applications. We were excited about the problems of building large distributed systems, and felt that serious rethinking of many of the existing computational paradigms, algorithms, and structuring principles for distributed computing was called for. In our research proposal, we summarized the problem domain as follows: “We expect LSDCS to exhibit great diversity of node and communications capability. Nodes will range from (mobile) laptop computers, workstations to supercomputers. Whereas mobile computers may well have unreliable, low bandwidth communications to the rest of the system, other parts of the system may well possess high bandwidth communications capability. To appreciate the problems posed by the sheer scale of a system comprising thousands of nodes, we observe that such systems will be rarely functioning in their entirety.

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.

Informative as well as tutorial, this book explores the design of advanced multimedia systems in depth--the characteristics of multimedia systems, the design challenges, the emerging technologies that support advanced multimedia systems, design methodologies, and implementation techniques for converting the design to produce efficient, flexible, and extensive applications.