Multimedia represents information in novel and varied formats. One of the most prevalent examples of continuous media is video. Extracting underlying data from these videos can be an arduous task. From video indexing, surveillance, and mining, complex computational applications are required to process this data. Intelligent Analysis of Multimedia Information is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of innovative techniques to a broad spectrum of multimedia applications by presenting emerging methods in continuous media processing and manipulation. This book offers a fresh perspective for students and researchers of information technology, media professionals, and programmers.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Mul timedia Information Systems (MIS’98) held in Istanbul, Turkey in September 1998. This workshop builds upon the success of the three previous workshops in this series that were held in Arlington, VA, West Point, NY, and Como, Italy. As in the past, this is a small focused workshop, consisting of participants drawn from a wide variety of disciplines (e. g. theory, algorithms, real time systems, networks, operating sys tems, graphics and visualization, databases, artificial intelligence, etc. ), all of which focus on research on one or more aspects of multimedia systems. The workshop program included 19 technical papers, three invited talks, and one panel. Of the technical papers 13 were accepted as regular papers and 6 as short con tributions. These papers cover a number of areas including: Multimedia storage system design Image storage and retrieval systems Quality of service considerations Networking support for multimedia information systems Distributed virtual environments Multimedia system architecture issues The invited talks were given by three experts well known for their work in this area. Satish K. Tripathi’s (University of California, Riverside) talk was on “Quality of Service Support for Multimedia Data on Internet”, Paul Emmerman (US Army Re search Laboratory) discussed “Visualizing the Digital Battlefield”, and Val Tannen (University of Pennsylvania) presented “Heterogeneous Data Integration with Mobile Information Manager”. The panel discussion, organized by Chahab Nastar of INRIA, France, addressed “Trends in Visual Information Retrieval.

This volume collects the proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Multimedia Information Systems, MIS 2005, which was held during September 19–21, 2005 in the beautiful town of Sorrento, Italy. The MIS series of workshops started in 1995 with the aim of fostering - terdisciplinary discussions and research in all aspects of multimedia information systems, in all their diversity. Since then, in MIS workshops,issues ranging from fundamental multimedia information management research to advanced app- cations in multimedia systems related ?elds have been discussed, new systems have been reported, and the lessons learned have provided new insights into this dynamic and exciting area of computer science and engineering. As the program chairs of the MIS 2005 workshop, we note that while desi- ing an e?ective multimedia system, two complementary issues have to be taken into account: (a) the need to use appropriate technologies in acquiring, p- cessing, and delivering multimedia data which manifest themselves under very di?erent shapes; and (b) the need for modeling, indexing, querying, retrieving, mining, and visualizing data under di?erent system and device capabilities, for di?erent users. Therefore, besides the development of more traditional content management technologies, there are emerging needs to gather media from se- ing devices in the environmental context, for informedprocessingofmediabased on the current task and resources, and for making the results available to the user in the most suitable form based on the capabilities and preferences of the user.

Multimedia Information Systems brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area. Multimedia Information Systems serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging research issues in the field.

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.

Searching Multimedia Databases by Content bridges the gap between the database and signal processing communities by providing the necessary background information for the reader and presenting it along with the intuition and mechanics of the best existing tools in each area. The first half of Searching Multimedia Databases by Content reviews the most successful database access methods, in increasing complexity, reaching up to spatial access methods and text retrieval. In all cases, the emphasis is on practical approaches that have been incorporated in commercial systems, or that seem very promising. The second half of the book uses the above access methods to achieve fast searching in a database of signals. A general methodology is presented, which suggests extracting a few good features from each multimedia object, thus mapping objects into points in a metric space. Finally, the book concludes by presenting some recent successful applications of the methodology on time series and color images. Searching Multimedia Databases by Content is targeted towards researchers and developers of multimedia systems. The book can also serve as a textbook for a graduate course on multimedia searching, covering both access methods as well as the basics of signal processing.