User-interaction supported data-retrieving engine for distributed multimedia presentations

Distributed multimedia presentation enables users to view a multimedia presentation in the distributed manner, in which the objects of the presentation are located in remote sites. User-interaction provides the viewer with convenient viewing styles like fast forward and fast backward for a presentation, but it also introduces complexity to the data-retrieving engine. A smart data-retrieving engine that supports user interactions for the Synchronization Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) based multimedia presentation is proposed in the paper. The SMIL script of the presentation is first converted to real-time synchronization model (RTSM) in order to provide a systematic view of the synchronization relationship. The algorithm for determining the proper objects to be retrieved as well as the pre-fetch time of the object under user actions is proposed for the data-retrieving engine.