A spatio-temporal semantic model for multimedia database systems and multimedia information systems

As more information sources become available in multimedia systems, the dev elopment of abstract semantic models for video, audio, text, and image data becomes very important. An abstract semantic model has two requirements: I t should be rich enough to provide a friendly interface of multimedia prese ntation synchronization schedules to the users and it should be a good prog ramming data structure for implementation in order to control multimedia pl ayback. An abstract semantic model based on an augmented transition network (ATN) is presented. The inputs for ATNs are modeled by multimedia input st rings. Multimedia input strings provide an efficient means for iconic index ing of the temporal/spatial relations of media streams and semantic objects . An ATN and its subnetworks are used to represent the appearing sequence o f media streams and semantic objects. The arc label is a substring of a mul timedia input string. In this design, a presentation is driven by a multime dia input string. Each subnetwork has its own multimedia input string. Data base queries relative to text, image, and video can be answered via substri ng matching at subnetworks. Multimedia browsing allows users the flexibilit y to select any part of the presentation they prefer to see. This means tha t the ATN and its subnetworks can be included in multimedia database system s which are controlled by a database management system (DBMS). User interac tions and loops are also provided in an ATN. Therefore, ATNs provide three major capabilities: multimedia presentations, temporal/spatial multimedia d atabase searching, and multimedia browsing.