A Multiple-Stream Multimedia Presentation Middleware Based on Multicast Communications

Abstract

The Internet explosion impels the extensive demands for distributed multimedia presentations (DMPs), which provide multiple users with QoS-controlled multimedia services under multicast communications, such as media distribution and virtual classroom. In this paper, we propose and develop a multiple-stream multimedia middleware, which is named Mcast. Mcast (i) provides a exible authoring tool to allow users to author a multiple-stream multimedia presentation in a multicast environment and (ii) achieves smooth multi- media presentations with the temporal control mech- anism. This paper describes the major considerations and techniques that are involved in the design and im- plementation of Mcast. System developers can incor- porate Mcast to develop multiple-stream multimedia presentation based on multicast communications.