A synchronization and flow control scheme for interactive multimedia-on demand (MOD) systems

Synchronization control with VCR-like user interactions in the multi-stream environment is very complicated and difficult. The main reasons are that: (i) those media units stored in the client buffers and flowing in the networks may be either useful or useless when the user interaction is issued, and (ii) the servers' media transmission should be adjusted according to the presentation status of the client. Additionally, different VCR-like user interactions have their own processing considerations, which result in different control schemes for different VCR-like user interactions. We propose some control schemes to handle interactive multimedia communication in the distributed multi-stream environment and develop an MOD system on SUN SPARC workstations accordingly.