A TEMPORAL REFERENCE FRAMEWORK FOR MULTIMEDIA SYNCHRONIZATION

The synchronization problem for audio/visual reproduction has consumed engineers since the advent of recorded audio and images and the first multimedia productions, As computers have evolved to support programm ed reproduction of multimedia information, the complexity but not the character or interest have changed, In the digital domain synchronizat ion problems exist due to data distribution and communications, random events caused by human-computer interaction, and general computer and communications performance limitations, This rich research domain has led to numerous approaches to the modeling and execution of multimedi a synchronization scenarios, Unfortunately, these approaches are diffi cult to compare and evaluate due to their varied theoretical bases and modeling techniques. In this paper we develop a uniform, theoretical foundation for discussing multimedia synchronization and temporal spec ification, We propose a temporal reference framework and use it to com pare existing temporal specification schemes and their relationships t o multimedia synchronization. The ensuing comparison of existing speci fication and synchronization techniques demonstrates the utility of th e framework.