COLLABORATIVE MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS - SYNTHESIS OF MEDIA OBJECTS

When a group {I1,..., I-n} of individuals wishes to collaboratively co nstruct a complex multimedia document, the first requirement is that t hey be able to manipulate media-objects created by one another. For in stance, ii individual I-j wishes to access some media objects present at participant I-k'S site, he must be able to: 1) retrieve this object from across the network, 2) ensure that the object is in a form that is compatible with the viewing/editing resources he has available at h is node, and 3) ensure that the object has the desired quality (such a s image size and resolution). Furthermore, he must be able to achieve these goals at the lowest possible cost. In this paper, we develop a t heory of media objects, and present optimal algorithms for collaborati ve object sharing/synthesis of the sort envisaged above. We then exten d the algorithms to incorporate quality constraints (such as image siz e) as well as distribution across multiple nodes. The theoretical mode l is validated by an experimental implementation that supports the the oretical results.