Realizing MPEG-4 streaming over the Internet: a client/server architecture using DMIF

The paper presents the implementation of an MPEG-4 Streaming System for the delivery of multiple elementary stream presentations containing audio-visual objects. This system has been tested with the MPEG-4 demonstration software implementation (IMI), but it is in fact a generic platform for multimedia presentation delivery. The signalling and delivery layer of this system implementation conforms to the recommendations made by part 6 of the MPEG-4 standard, Delivery Multimedia Integration Framework (DMIF). We present the issues involved in designing our DMIF-based streaming server and the levels of abstraction required. The system enables interactive media streaming across the Internet through its Data and Control Planes. It also implements a source based rate control system, a Synchronization Layer packetizer and a signalling mechanism.