A synchronization mechanism for continuous media in multimedia communications

This paper proposes a media synchronization mechanism which adjusts the output timing among stored continuous media streams in multimedia communications. The proposed method consists of intra-stream and inter-stream synchronization mechanisms. The inter-stream synchronization control is performed after the intra-stream synchronization control. Then, whether the intra-stream synchronization is still maintained or not is checked. The mechanism con be used in networks which have unknown delay bounds, and it does not suppose periodical generation of media units such as video frames. It also deals with two types of media streams depending on how strictly to synchronize media streams: tightly-coupled media streams and loosely-coupled media streams. Furthermore, we enhance the mechanism to support real-time-inputted media streams as in TV conferencing.