Extended video stream by media transcoding functions

In distributed multimedia systems, we have been able to communicate with each other by using audio and video streams. If we can use a super high speed network we may construct intercommunication environments using high quality video multicast streams such as DV (digital video) that use about 30 Mbps per stream. Moreover, if translator and mixer functions defined by RTF are available in the intercommunication environments, it is possible to transcode the high quality video streams into another format of stream. We can then obtain useful peer-to-peer communication environments. However, it is difficult for us to prepare the suitable transcoding node in advance because the required intercommunication environments are not always static. Accordingly, we should consider on demand transcoding functions with a relocatable decision method. We propose a mobile agent based novel middleware system that realizes media processing and session management by using mobile agents.