Embedded video in hypermedia documents

Abstract

As the availability of digital video becomes commonplace, a shift in application focus will occur from merely accessing video as an independent data stream to embedding video with other multimedia data types into coordinated hypermedia presentations. The migration to embedded video will present new demands on application and support environments: processing of any one piece of video data will depend on how that data relates to other data streams active within the same presentation. This article describes presentation, synchronization, and interaction control issues for manipulating embedded video. First we describe the requirements for embedded video, contrasted against other forms of video use. Next we consider mechanisms for describing and implementing the behavior of embedded-video segments relative to other data items in a document; these relationships form the basis of implementing cooperative control among the events in a presentation. Finally we consider extending the possibilities for tailoring embedded video to the characteristics of the local runtime environment; this forms the basis for adaptive, application-level quality-of-service control of a presentation. In all cases, we describe a mechanism to externalize the behavior of hypermedia presentations containing resource-intensive data requirements so that effective control can be implemented by low-level system facilities based on application-specific requirements. We present our results in terms of the CMIFed authoring/presentation system.