Continuous Media Applications

by:

Lawrence A. Rowe
Computer Science Division - EECS
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776
(Rowe@CS.Berkeley.EDU)

Abstract

The Berkeley Plateau Multimedia Research Group is doing research on systems infrastructure and applications of continuous media (i.e., digital video and audio). The group is working on a variety of topics including: software toolkits to develop continuous media applications, MPEG video compression and decompression, video-on demand systems (VOD), desktop video conferencing, and hypermedia courseware.

This abstract will briefly describe two multipoint continuous media applications that we have developed: 1) a distributed video-on-demand system and 2) a desktop video conferencing system. Both applications were developing using the Berkeley Continuous Media Toolkit which provides support for developing distributed client/server applications including continuous media network protocols, continuous media device abstractions, distributed client/server programming, and large object storage services. The current status of the toolkit and planned extensions will be summarized.

Our view is that multipoint services have not been widely adopted because high quality, low cost applications that actually solve users problems have not yet been developed. Many interesting and potentially useful applications have been developed, but current technology and application restrictions have reduced the effectiveness of these applications.