Synchronization in WebSmart Multimedia Authoring System

• Main Author: Li, Lan
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7932

While the Web has become the universal choice for on-line information exchange, the Internet is preparing for the next generation of Web document: synchronized multimedia. Compared to a year before, video contents on Web have been tripled. Most of the contents are media-on-demand news and entertainment clips played in Web browsers by plug-ins. However, simple playback of videos does not fully utilize the superiorities of digital video over analog video, and active computer over passive TV. Digitized video has the potential of being synchronized with other desktop applications to create interactive presentations. To realize this possibility, a comprehensive framework is required for multimedia authoring, delivering and presentation. We developed and herein present WebSmart, an authoring system for bringing synchronized multimedia into the Web. The system is comprised of four components: a visual Editor that creates interactive documents by point-and-click, a CaptionMaker that synchronizes closed caption with video/audio, a QuizDesigner that enables two-way interactions between video and surrounding objects, and an Applet that presents the documents in the end users' Web browsers. Synchronization is the core issue at both the authoring and presentation stages of multimedia documents. We developed simple but effective algorithms for different synchronization requirements: coarse-grained HTML flipping and finer-grained closed captioning. Flexibility and efficiency are the major concerns of the WebSmart synchronization models. This thesis will be focused on the synchronization techniques of the WebSmart system. === Science, Faculty of === Computer Science, Department of === Graduate