A real-time prefetching method for continuous media playback

Continuous media (CM) such as digitally-coded video and sound impose time constraints on multimedia systems to prevent hiccups. In this paper we propose a new CM playback method that is suitable for handling CM streams with various playback rates and a rather short duration of playback. Our proposed method is aimed at providing both good response times and high disk utilization. For better disk utilization, the SCAN algorithm is employed for retrieving CM data and then a real-time bulk-scan is conducted. Along with this bulk-scan, we propose an EDF-style algorithm with a priority-driven property. Owing to the flexibility of disk scanning, our method is able to provide a good response time as well as high disk utilization. We show performance advantages through experimental comparisons between our method and earlier round-style methods.