The advances in the generation and processing of multimedia data (e. g. documents, images, video, audio, animations, etc. ) have had an immense impact on multimedia applications and, as a result, multimedia has permeated almost every aspect of our daily lives. This development has also brought with it a whole host of issues and ch- lenges which were either not as apparent before or were non-existent. Today, digital media is relied upon as primary news and information resource, as evidence in a court of law, as part of medical records or as financial documents. However, there is still lack of authoritative mechanisms to verify the origin and veracity of media data. - deed, multimedia content has become an extremely valuable asset, and it is being both disseminated and consumed on a larger scale than ever before, but the issues conce- ing how the content owners and publishers should control the distribution of and - cess to their content have not been satisfactorily resolved yet. There are various other issues related to use of multimedia that require further analysis and research. For example, it is a known fact that some criminal organi- tions communicate with its members by posting information embedded media to p- lic forums and web-sites to evade surveillance by law enforcement. Conventional multimedia processing approaches do not provide sufficiently effective means for - fending against such communication.

Multimedia data comprising of images, audio and video is becoming increasingly common. The decreasing costs of consumer electronic devices such as digital cameras and digital camcorders, along with the ease of transportation facilitated by the Internet, has lead to a phenomenal rise in the amount of multimedia data generated and distributed. Given that this trend of increased use of multimedia data is likely to accelerate, there is an urgent need for providing a clear means of capturing, storing, indexing, retrieving, analyzing and summarizing such data. Content-based access to multimedia data is of primary importance since it is the natural way by which human beings interact with such information. To facilitate the content-based access of multimedia information, the first step is to derive feature measures from these data so that a feature space representation of the data content can be formed. This can subsequently allow for mapping the feature space to the symbol space (semantics) either automatically or through human intervention. Thus, signal to symbol mapping, useful for any practical system, can be successfully achieved. Perspectives on Content-Based Multimedia Systems provides a comprehensive set of techniques to tackle these important issues. This book offers detailed solutions to a wide range of practical problems in building real systems by providing specifics of three systems built by the authors. While providing a systems focus, it also equips the reader with a keen understanding of the fundamental issues, including a formalism for content-based multimedia database systems, multimedia feature extraction, object-based techniques, signature-based techniques and fuzzy retrieval techniques. The performance evaluation issues of practical systems is also explained. This book brings together essential elements of building a content-based multimedia database system in a way that makes them accessible to practitioners in computer science and electrical engineering. It can also serve as a textbook for graduate-level courses.

Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems reflects the state of the art of emerging research on the meaning of multimedia information, as presented during IFIP's Eighth Data Semantics Working Conference (DS-8), organized by its Working Group 2.6 on Databases, and held at Rotorua, New Zealand, in January 1999. DS-8 was planned as an active forum for researchers and practitioners focusing on those issues that involve the semantics of the information represented, stored, and manipulated by multimedia systems. Depending on the topic and state of research, issues may be covered either deeply theoretically or quite practically, or even both. These proceedings contain twenty-one papers carefully selected by an International Programme Committee and organized in six thematic areas: * Video Data Modelling and Use; * Image Databases; * Applications of Multimedia Systems; * Multimedia Modeling in General; * Multimedia Information Retrieval; * Semantics and Metadata.For almost every area, important topics and issues include: * data modeling and query languages for media such as audio, video, and images; * methodological aspects of multimedia database design; * intelligent multimedia information retrieval; * knowledge discovery and data mining in multimedia information; * multimedia user interfaces. Three visionary keynote addresses, by famous experts Ramesh Jain, Hermann Maurer and Masao Sakauchi, set the stage for discussion and future directions for the field. The collection of papers that resulted now offers a glimpse of the excitement and enthusiasm from DS-8. Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on database systems, multimedia systems, or information retrieval systems and as a reference for practitioners and researchers in industry.

Multimedia Information Systems explores the technical, human, organizational and socio-economic issues which underpin the implementation and use of multimedia information systems. This unique book comprehensively defines multimedia information systems and its emerging architecture. Today's important issues of networked multimedia information systems and multimedia trafficking on the information superhighway are thoroughly investigated. Multimedia information systems applications and organizational implications are also discussed along with multimedia authoring systems. Multimedia Information Systems is essential reading for all students and professionals faced with the challenges of multimedia information systems management and development. Multimedia Information Systems develops an awareness of the problems associated with multimedia information systems management, and the ability to understand and address these emerging challenges on an organizational and technical level. The book explores the limitations of multimedia on the information superhighway, and offers solutions for present and future development on the Internet. This book also scrutinizes the current applications of multimedia information systems, and examines how they can be developed. Multimedia Information Systems serves as an excellent text for courses on the subject, and as an invaluable reference for multimedia information systems professionals.

Information and communication technologies can provide new paradigms in healthcare provision. In particular, new Pervasive Healthcare technologies can revolutionise the dynamics of healthcare, enabling people to remain at home for longer, at lower costs to health and welfare organisations.

This book reveals how pervasive healthcare technologies can be designed in conjunction with users and carers, as well as exploring the application of novel methods and technologies.

Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Systems consists of 20 contributions from researchers and experts. The first group of chapters deals with the audio and video processing for communications applications, including topics ranging from multimedia content delivery over the Internet, through the speech processing and recognition to recognition of non-speech sounds that can be attributed to the surrounding environment. The book also includes sections on applications of error control coding, information theory, and digital signal processing for communication systems like modulation, software-defined radio, and channel estimation. Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Systems is written for researchers working on communication systems and signal processing, as well as telecommunications industry professionals.

This book provides a theoretical and practical explanation of the latest advancements in information retrieval and their application to existing systems. It takes a system approach, discussing all aspects of an Information Retrieval System. The major difference between this book and the first edition is the addition to this text of descriptions of the automated indexing of multimedia documents, as items in information retrieval are now considered to be a combination of text along with graphics, audio, image and video data types. The growth of the Internet and the availability of enormous volumes of data in digital form have necessitated intense interest in techniques to assist the user in locating data. The importance of the Internet and its associated hypertext linked structure are put into perspective as a new type of information retrieval data structure. The total system approach also includes discussion of the human interface and the importance of information visualization for identification of relevant information.With the availability of large quantities of multi-media on the Internet (audio, video, images), Information Retrieval Systems need to address multi-modal retrieval. The primary use of this book is as a college text on Information Retrieval Systems. But in addition to the theoretical aspects, the book maintains a theme of practicality that puts into perspective the importance and utilization of the theory in systems that are being used by anyone on the Internet. The student will gain an understanding of what is achievable using existing technologies and deficient areas that warrant additional research. The text provides coverage of all of the major aspects of information retrieval and has sufficient detail to allow students to implement a simple Information Retrieval System.

Semantic Models for Multimedia Database Searching and Browsing begins with the introduction of multimedia information applications, the need for the development of the multimedia database management systems (MDBMSs), and the important issues and challenges of multimedia systems. The temporal relations, the spatial relations, the spatio-temporal relations, and several semantic models for multimedia information systems are also introduced. In addition, this book discusses recent advances in multimedia database searching and multimedia database browsing. More specifically, issues such as image/video segmentation, motion detection, object tracking, object recognition, knowledge-based event modeling, content-based retrieval, and key frame selections are presented for the first time in a single book. Two case studies consisting of two semantic models are included in the book to illustrate how to use semantic models to design multimedia information systems. Semantic Models for Multimedia Database Searching and Browsing is an excellent reference and can be used in advanced level courses for researchers, scientists, industry professionals, software engineers, students, and general readers who are interested in the issues, challenges, and ideas underlying the current practice of multimedia presentation, multimedia database searching, and multimedia browsing in multimedia information systems.

Exploration of Visual Data presents latest research efforts in the area of content-based exploration of image and video data. The main objective is to bridge the semantic gap between high-level concepts in the human mind and low-level features extractable by the machines. The two key issues emphasized are "content-awareness" and "user-in-the-loop". The authors provide a comprehensive review on algorithms for visual feature extraction based on color, texture, shape, and structure, and techniques for incorporating such information to aid browsing, exploration, search, and streaming of image and video data. They also discuss issues related to the mixed use of textual and low-level visual features to facilitate more effective access of multimedia data. Exploration of Visual Data provides state-of-the-art materials on the topics of content-based description of visual data, content-based low-bitrate video streaming, and latest asymmetric and nonlinear relevance feedback algorithms, which to date are unpublished.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, W2GIS 2012, held in Naples, Italy, in April 2012. The 13 full and 4 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: 3D and multimodal spatial interaction; positioning; spatial human-computer interaction; trajectory analysis; geo semantics; and sensor networks.

The research in content-based indexing and retrieval of visual information such as images and video has become one of the most populated directions in the vast area of information technologies. Social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, FileMobile, and DailyMotion host and supply facilities for accessing a tremendous amount of professional and user generated data. The areas of societal activity, such as, video protection and security, also generate thousands and thousands of terabytes of visual content. This book presents the most recent results and important trends in visual information indexing and retrieval. It is intended for young researchers, as well as, professionals looking for an algorithmic solution to a problem.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN 11). The 20 full papers, 3 posters, 10 demos and 4 workshops presented were carefully selected from numerous submissions. The conference aims enhancing the understanding of recent and anticipated advances in interactive technologies, and their applications to entertainment, education, culture, and the arts. Interaction technologies are having relevant changes in the last years, and will influence the way users consume and interact with the media and applications, both locally and over the Internet. The explosion of natural, multimodal, and touch based interfaces, and their access to the general public, has made new interaction paradigms a reality.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 34th European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2012, held in Barcelona, Spain, in April 2012. The 37 full papers, 28 poster papers and 7 demonstrations presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 167 submissions. The contributions are organized in sections named: query representation; blogs and online-community search; semi-structured retrieval; evaluation; applications; retrieval models; image and video retrieval; text and content classification, categorisation, clustering; systems efficiency; industry track; and posters.

The volume contains the papers presented at the fifth working conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS 2001), held on May 21-22, 2001 at (and organized by) the GMD -German National Research Center for Information Technology GMD - Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute IPSI, in Darmstadt, Germany. The conference is arranged jointly by the Technical Committees 11 and 6 of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) The name "Communications and Multimedia Security" was first used in 1995, Reinhard Posch organized the first in this series of conferences in Graz, Austria, following up on the previously national (Austrian) "IT Sicherheit" conferences held in Klagenfurt (1993) and Vienna (1994). In 1996, the CMS took place in Essen, Germany; in 1997 the conference moved to Athens, Greece. The CMS 1999 was held in Leuven, Belgium. This conference provides a forum for presentations and discussions on issues which combine innovative research work with a highly promising application potential in the area of security for communication and multimedia security. State-of-the-art issues as well as practical experiences and new trends in the areas were topics of interest again, as it has already been the case at previous conferences. This year, the organizers wanted to focus the attention on watermarking and copyright protection for e commerce applications and multimedia data. We also encompass excellent work on recent advances in cryptography and their applications. In recent years, digital media data have enormously gained in importance.

The Internet and the World Wide Web are deeply affecting the way things are traditionally done. E-commerce is changing businesses; the stock market is accessible to individuals; digitized journals, up-to-date databases, and newsgroups are changing the lives of researchers. Is it reasonable to think that learning will remain unaffected? Nevertheless, universities, with their blend of teaching and research, have much to offer to those who wish to learn more than simple skills: judgment, initiative, and fair competition for research positions. Over the years, universities have acquired invaluable resources in the form of laboratories and libraries with specially trained staff. How can they evolve to take advantage of the many possibilities of the Internet and broadband communication? Many institutions of higher education are trying to integrate new information and communications technologies into current curricula or to develop new learning paradigms for learning. Because it is still so early in the game they are eager to compare their efforts and results to the achievements of others and are willing to learn from them. The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a multi national federation of professional and technical organizations, founded in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO, whose mission is to assist in the development, exploitation, and application of Information Technology for the benefit of all peoples. Given this scope of activity, IFIP seemed the appropriate body to give an international dimension to such a forum.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the third Sino-foreign-interchange Workshop on Intelligence Science and Intelligent Data Engineering, IScIDE 2012, held in Nanjing, China, in October 2012. The 105 papers presented were carefully peer-reviewed and selected from 429 submissions. Topics covered include pattern recognition; computer vision and image processing; machine learning and computational intelligence; knowledge discovery, data mining, and web mining; graphics and computer visualization; and multimedia processing and applications.

Multimedia has two fundamental characteristics that can be expressed by the following formula: Multimedia = Multiple Media + Hypermedia. How can software engineering take advantage of these two characteristics? Will these two characteristics pose problems in multimedia systems design? These are some of the issues to be explored in this book. The first two chapters will be of interest to managers, software engineers, programmers, and people interested in gaining an overall understanding of multimedia software engineering. The next six chapters present multimedia software engineering according to the conceptual framework introduced in Chapter One. This is of particular use to practitioners, system developers, multimedia application designers, programmers, and people interested in prototyping multimedia applications. The next three chapters are more research-oriented and are mainly intended for researchers working on the specification, modeling, and analysis of distributed multimedia systems, but will also be relevant to scientists, researchers, and software engineers interested in the systems and theoretical aspects of multimedia software engineering. Multimedia Software Engineering can be used as a textbook in a graduate course on multimedia software engineering or in an undergraduate course on software design where the emphasis is on multimedia applications. It is especially suitable for a project-oriented course.

This preface tells the story of how Multimodal Usability responds to a special challenge. Chapter 1 describes the goals and structure of this book. The idea of describing how to make multimodal computer systems usable arose in the European Network of Excellence SIMILAR - "Taskforce for cre- ing human-machine interfaces SIMILAR to human-human communication," 2003- 2007, www. similar. cc. SIMILAR brought together people from multimodal signal processing and usability with the aim of creating enabling technologies for new kinds of multimodal systems and demonstrating results in research prototypes. Most of our colleagues in the network were, in fact, busy extracting features and guring out how to demonstrate progress in working interactive systems, while claiming not to have too much of a notion of usability in system development and evaluation. It was proposed that the authors support the usability of the many multimodal pro- types underway by researching and presenting a methodology for building usable multimodal systems. We accepted the challenge, rst and foremost, no doubt, because the formidable team spirit in SIMILAR could make people accept outrageous things. Second, h- ing worked for nearly two decades on making multimodal systems usable, we were curious - curious at the opportunity to try to understand what happens to traditional usability work, that is, work in human-computer interaction centred around tra- tional graphical user interfaces (GUIs), when systems become as multimodal and as advanced in other ways as those we build in research today.

Testing of Communicating Systems presents the latest worldwide results in both the theory and practice of the testing of communicating systems. This volume provides a forum that brings together the substantial volume of research on the testing of communicating systems, ranging from conference testing through interoperability testing to performance and QoS testing. The following topics are discussed in detail: * Types of testing; * Phases of the testing process; * Classes of systems to be tested; and * Theory and practice of testing.GBP/LISTGBP This book contains the selected proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on the Testing of Communicating Systems (formerly the International Workshop on Protocol Test Systems), sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and held in Budapest, Hungary, in September 1999. The book contains not only interesting research on testing different communication technologies from telecom and datacom systems to distributed systems, but also presents reports on the application of these results in industry.Testing of Communicating Systems will be essential reading for engineers, IT managers and research personnel working in computer science and telecommunications.

You already know you can create amazing things with LEGO, but did you know you can also make planes, trains, automobiles actually fly, roll, and run? You can even make functional robots without getting into Mindstorms and programming. In Practical LEGO Technics, Mark Rollins shows you how to use LEGO and Power Functions components like motors and remote controls to create motorized propellers, train engines, vehicle steering, outriggers, wings, landing gear, and robot legs to create a wide variety of fun, unique LEGO creations. LEGO Technic is similar to Mindstorms in that you can create all sorts of cool vehicles and gadgets. But unlike Mindstorms, you don't have to learn programming. Power Functions allows you to add motors, remote control, and battery boxes to your Lego projects, no programming required. And while you could just build a LEGO Technic gadget from a boxed set, with Practical LEGO Technics, you'll learn the hows and whys of Technic project design, and pick up ideas for your own custom projects.You will: * Create motorized wheeled vehicles that run, steer, and even have headlights * Create walking contructions, including robots with working heads and hands * Learn even more ways to make your LEGO Technic creations more realistic What you'll learn * How to put a motor on any LEGO vehicle to bring it to life, including airplane wings and landing gear * How to put a suspension system, steering mechanism, and working lights on your Technic vehicles * How to create walking vehicles with as many legs as you want * How to built LEGO robots with moving parts, including head and arms * How to design LEGO vehicles that look and work like real construction vehicles, including bulldozers, dump trucks, and cranes Who this book is for Lego and building enthusiasts of every age and experience level who want to learn how to build creations with LEGO Technic.

Testing of Communicating Systems presents the latest world-wide results in both theory and practice. This volume provides a forum in which the substantial volume of research on the testing of communicating systems, spanning from conformance testing through interoperability testing, to performance and QoS testing, is brought together. The following topics are discussed in detail: Types of testing; Phases of the testing process; Classes of systems to be tested; and Theory and practice of testing. This book contains the selected proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on the Testing of Communicating Systems, formerly the International Workshop on Protocol Test Systems, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and held in Tomsk, Russia, in August/September 1998. Testing of Communicating Systems will be essential reading for engineers, IT managers and research personnel working in computer sciences and telecommunications.

There's no class in art school that can teach you this. Believe it or not, there's a lot more to directing a great animated film than beautiful illustrations and cool characters. You need to bring out your inner creative visionary and take your savvy leadership skills to the front lines - being great with a pencil, brush, or stylus is not enough. Tony Bancroft released his inner creative visionary when creating Mulan. In Directing for Animation he shows you exactly how. Pull the right strings to bring your characters to life and center your story by developing the visual cues that lend to your audience's understanding of the plot, place, and purpose. Tony walks you through the process, bringing you behind the scenes of real, well-known projects - with a little help from some famous friends. Learn from the directors of Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Ice Age, Chicken Run, and Kung Fu Panda, and see how they developed stories and created characters that have endured for generations. Get the inside scoop behind these major features... pitfalls and all.

The two-volume set LNCS 7732 and 7733 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, MMM 2012, held in Huangshan, China, in January 2013. The 30 revised regular papers, 46 special session papers, 20 poster session papers, and 15 demo session papers, and 6 video browser showdown were carefully reviewed and selected from numeroues submissions. The two volumes contain papers presented in the topical sections on multimedia annotation I and II, interactive and mobile multimedia, classification, recognition and tracking I and II, ranking in search, multimedia representation, multimedia systems, poster papers, special session papers, demo session papers, and video browser showdown.

ATM Network Performance describes a unified approach to ATM network management. The focus is on satisfying quality-of-service requirements for individual B-ISDN connections. For an ATM network of output-buffer switches, the author describes how the basic network resources (switch buffer memory and link transmission bandwidth) should be allocated to achieve the required quality-of-service connections. The performance of proposed bandwidth scheduling policies is evaluated. Both single node and end-to-end performance results are given. In particular, these results are applied to resource provisioning problems for prerecorded (stored) video and video teleconferencing. The flow control problem for available bit rate traffic is also described. This book is intended for a one-term course in performance of Broadband Integrated-Services Digital Networks (B-ISDNs) based on a type of packet-switched communication network called Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The level of presentation is at the first year of graduate studies and for professionals working in the field, but it may be accessible to senior undergraduates as well. Some familiarity with ATM standards is assumed as such standards are only briefly outlined. All of the required background in discrete-time queueing theory is supplied. Exercises are given at the end of chapters. Solutions and/or hints to selected exercises are given in an Appendix.