Distributed multimedia applications require complex interactions with users and the introduction of temporal domain in their functional requirements. Work has been done in proposing programming environments on which distributed multimedia applications can be built. However these environments are often limited to building applications in a restrictive multimedia document paradigm. Due to the high complexity of multimedia applications, its device dependent nature and the fast changing technologies, further alterations and reuse of multimedia applications are found to be difficult....[ Read more ]

Distributed multimedia applications require complex interactions with users and the introduction of temporal domain in their functional requirements. Work has been done in proposing programming environments on which distributed multimedia applications can be built. However these environments are often limited to building applications in a restrictive multimedia document paradigm. Due to the high complexity of multimedia applications, its device dependent nature and the fast changing technologies, further alterations and reuse of multimedia applications are found to be difficult.

Little effort has been made to approach the problem of multimedia development by identifying common software structures essential in distributed multimedia applications in order to provide programming and runtime support for these structures. In this research, a technique to build distributed multimedia applications using multiple structures was proposed to improve the effectiveness of modeling distributed multimedia applications. A Distributed Multimedia System Environment (DMSE) was developed during this research to support the development of reusable multimedia applications by using the proposed technique.

Five common multimedia structures are identified and expressed using different multimedia models. Important features of a multimedia application are then decoupled into these distinct models to provide a structural and conceivable view of a multimedia system. The models are grouped and interrelated into a structural framework to facilitate structured programming paradigm.

Development and runtime tools were built in this research for the construction of multimedia applications. User requirements are represented by a Multimedia Description Language (MDL) which was designed to capture the ideas in the structural framework. A Multimedia Integrated Development Environment (MIDE) is provided for programmers to develop multimedia applications with the help of visualization tools.

Several multimedia applications have been developed to demonstrate the capabilities and usefulness of the environment: a multimedia conference system, a video-phone system and an interactive presentation application.