Virtual multimedia objects as the platform of customizing multimedia data

Customizing multimedia data as well as referring its portion is required in multimedia applications. This paper proposes a virtual multimedia object (VMO). This is the object virtually created based on objects in multimedia data. Users can derive portions of multimedia data, append specific data to them, create a new object based on them, and convert their data formats through VMOs. This paper tries to formally describe VMOs. Moreover, a pointing entry is introduced to implement the system based on the concept of VMOs. A pointing entry represents the mappings between a VMO and its original data. Pointing entries are created through user-defined deriving procedures. VMOs are derived through user-defined mapping functions by using the original data and pointing entries. A prototype system using pointing entries has been constructed. Applying it to a multimedia application clarifies that users can manipulate VMOs by writing only a few lines of code, and the mechanism of VMOs gives us a programming guideline.