Checking the temporal integrity of interactive multimedia documents

When authoring multimedia scenarios, and in particular scenarios with user interaction, where the sequence and time of occurrence of interactions is n ot predefined, it is difficult to guarantee the consistency of the resultin g scenarios. As a consequence, the execution of the scenario may result in unexpected behavior or inconsistent use of media. The present paper propose s a methodology for checking the temporal integrity of interactive multimed ia document (IMD) scenarios at authoring time at various levels. The IMD fl ow is mainly defined by the events occurring during the IMD session. Integr ity checking consists of a set of discrete steps, during which we transform the scenario into temporal constraint networks representing the constraint s linking the different possible events in the scenario. Temporal constrain t verification techniques are applied to verify the integrity of the scenar io, deriving a minimal network, showing possible temporal relationships bet ween events given a set of constraints.