Design and implementation of streaming system for MPEG-4 based interactive contents over IP networks

We present an MP4 file streaming system over IP networks. Using the proposed system, the user can access MP4 contents in a server and interact with the selected content via IP networks. The MP4 contents contain the media data, and information of spatio-temporal relationship and behavior of the media data based on MPEG-4. The presented streaming server system consists of GUI, server management layer, sync layer, and delivery layer. The GUI shows the streaming status such as delay, loss and jitter. The server management layer controls creating and closing sessions. The sync layer was designed to generate SL packets, and the delivery layer sends each object of MP4 contents to clients. In addition, we have implemented a client system based on the IM1-2D player developed by AHG of MPEG. The client system can receive and play MP4 contents and send user's message to the server via IP networks. The presented streaming system was designed to use real-time transport protocol (RTP) for media data requiring real-time streaming, RTP control protocol (RTCP) for QoS management and transmission control protocol (TCP) for essential data such as initial object descriptor (IOD), object descriptor (OD), binary format for scene (BIFS), and for loss-sensitive media data such as still images.