Multimedia Systems discusses the basic characteristics of multimedia operating systems, networking and communication, and multimedia middleware systems. The overall goal of the book is to provide a broad understanding of multimedia systems and applications in an integrated manner: a multimedia application and its user interface must be developed in an integrated fashion with underlying multimedia middleware, operating systems, networks, security, and multimedia devices.

Fundamental characteristics of multimedia operating and distributed communication systems are presented, especially scheduling algorithms and other OS supporting approaches for multimedia applications with soft-real-time deadlines, multimedia file systems and servers with their decision algorithms for data placement, scheduling and buffer management, multimedia communication, transport, and streaming protocols, services with their error control, congestion control and other Quality of Service aware and adaptive algorithms, synchronization services with their skew control methods, and group communication with their group coordinating algorithms and other distributed services.

This book brings together three great motifs of the network society: the seeking and using of information by individuals and groups; the creation and application of knowledge in organizations; and the fundamental transformation of these activities as they are enacted on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Of the three, the study of how individuals and groups seek information probably has the longest history, beginning with the early "information needs and uses" studies soon after the Second World War. The study of organizations as knowledge-based social systems is much more recent, and really gained momentum only within the last decade or so. The study of the World Wide Web as information and communication media is younger still, but has generated tremendous excitement, partly because it has the potential to reconfigure the ways in which people seek information and use knowledge, and partly because it offers new methods of analyzing and measuring how in fact such information and knowledge work gets done. As research endeavors, these streams overlap and share conceptual constructs, perspectives, and methods of analysis. Although these overlaps and shared concerns are sometimes apparent in the published research, there have been few attempts to connect these ideas explicitly and identify cross-disciplinary themes. This book is an attempt to fill this void. The three authors of this book possess contrasting backgrounds and thus adopt complementary vantage points to observe information seeking and knowledge work.

Multimedia Technologies and Applications for the 21st Century: Visions of World Experts presents contributions from leading researchers and experts describing their current research and their views of the future trends in the field. The book consists of thirteen chapters in five parts. These chapters tackle a number of critical issues in distributed multimedia systems and applications - from VLSI processors that support multimedia and multimedia servers, through multimedia databases and multimedia networks and communications, to merging multimedia applications. Only a few years ago multimedia seemed like a brand new research field and an emerging new industry. Today, at the edge of the 21st century, multimedia research is coming of age, and the multimedia industry has significantly grown with the total market estimated to be about $50 billion. Several years ago it was felt that the digital media revolution had just started; however, the seeds had been sown long before. Fundamental technologies, such as interactive laser disks, video games, and electronic encyclopedias were invented in the 1970s and 80s. They represented the seeds for current hot' applications, such as digital libraries, video-on-demand, interactive television, and videoconferencing. Another aspect of the digital media revolution is the formation of a new media industry composed of computer, entertainment, communication, and consumer electronics companies. Many industry segments are currently involved in creating new products and services, positioning themselves for the 21st century. They include telephone, cable, and satellite TV companies, communication equipment companies, TV and radio broadcasters, on-line Internet service providers, cable channels, movie studios, record companies, book publishers, CD-ROM title creators, Internet tool vendors, multimedia software tools companies, computer companies, general software tools companies, computer add-on vendors, semiconductor vendors, and consumer electronics vendors. Multimedia Technologies and Applications for the 21st Century: Visions of World Experts should stimulate the curiosity of its readers and inspire new technological breakthroughs in this exciting field. It serves as a valuable reference for system designers, engineers, programmers, and managers who are involved in multimedia systems, the Internet, and their applications. This book can also be used as a textbook for advanced courses on multimedia in engineering curricula.

One of the most intriguing problems in video processing is the removal of the redundancy or the compression of a video signal. There are a large number of applications which depend on video compression. Data compression represents the enabling technology behind the multimedia and digital television revolution. In motion compensated lossy video compression the original video sequence is first split into three new sources of information, segmentation, motion and residual error. These three information sources are then quantized, leading to a reduced rate for their representation but also to a distorted reconstructed video sequence. After the decomposition of the original source into segmentation, mo tion and residual error information is decided, the key remaining problem is the allocation of the available bits into these three sources of information. In this monograph a theory is developed which provides a solution to this fundamental bit allocation problem. It can be applied to all quad-tree-based motion com pensated video coders which use a first order differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) scheme for the encoding of the displacement vector field (DVF) and a block-based transform scheme for the encoding of the displaced frame differ ence (DFD). An optimal motion estimator which results in the smallest DFD energy for a given bit rate for the encoding of the DVF is also a result of this theory. Such a motion estimator is used to formulate a motion compensated interpolation scheme which incorporates a global smoothness constraint for the DVF."

Researchers in data management have recently recognized the importance of a new class of data-intensive applications that requires managing data streams, i.e., data composed of continuous, real-time sequence of items. Streaming applications pose new and interesting challenges for data management systems. Such application domains require queries to be evaluated continuously as opposed to the one time evaluation of a query for traditional applications. Streaming data sets grow continuously and queries must be evaluated on such unbounded data sets. These, as well as other challenges, require a major rethink of almost all aspects of traditional database management systems to support streaming applications.

Stream Data Management comprises eight invited chapters by researchers active in stream data management. The collected chapters provide exposition of algorithms, languages, as well as systems proposed and implemented for managing streaming data.

Stream Data Management is designed to appeal to researchers or practitioners already involved in stream data management, as well as to those starting out in this area. This book is also suitable for graduate students in computer science interested in learning about stream data management.

With the rapidly increasing penetration of laptop computers and mobile phones, which are primarily used by mobile users to access Internet s- vices like e-mail and World Wide Web (WWW) access, support of Internet services in a mobile environment is an emerging requirement. Wireless n- works have been used for communication among fully distributed users in a multimedia environment that has the needs to provide real-time bursty traffic (such as voice or video) and data traffic with excellent reliability and service quality. To satisfy the huge wireless multimedia service demand and improve the system performance, efficient channel access methods and analytical methods must be provided. In this way very accurate models, that faithfully reproduce the stochastic behavior of multimedia wireless communication and computer networks, can be constructed. Most of these system models are discrete-time queueing systems. Queueing networks and Markov chains are commonly used for the p- formance and reliability evaluation of computer, communication, and m- ufacturing systems. Although there are quite a few books on the individual topics of queueing networks and Markov chains, we have found none that covers the topics of discrete-time and continuous-time multichannel mul- traffic queueing networks. On the other hand, the design and development of multichannel mul- hop network systems and interconnected network systems or integrated n- works of multimedia traffic require not only such average performance m- sures as the throughput or packet delay but also higher moments of traffic departures and transmission delay.

Multimedia Information Systems brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area. Multimedia Information Systems serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging research issues in the field.

High-Speed Networking for Multimedia Applications presents the latest research on the architecture and protocols for high-speed networks, focusing on communication support for distributed multimedia applications. This includes the two major issues of ATM Networking and quality of service for multimedia applications. It is to be expected that most of the bandwidth in future high-speed networks will be taken up by multimedia applications, transmitting digital audio and video. Traditional networking protocols are not suitable for this as they do not provide guaranteed bandwidth, end-to-end delay or delay jitter, nor do they have addressing schemes or routing algorithms for multicast connections. High-Speed Networking for Multimedia Applications is a collection of high quality research papers which address these issues, providing interesting and innovative solutions. It is an essential reference for engineers and computer scientists working in this area. It is also a comprehensive text for graduate students of high-speed networking and multimedia applications.

Several works on multimedia storage appear in literature today, but very little if any, have been devoted to handling long duration video retrieval, over large scale networks. Distributed retrieval of multimedia documents, especially the long duration documents, is an imperative step in rendering high-quality, high-fidelity, and cost-effective services for network service providers.

Distributed Multimedia Retrieval Strategies for Large Scale Networked Systems presents an up-to-date research status in the domain of distributed video retrieval. This professional book will include several different techniques that are in place for long duration video retrieval. An experimentally tested technology under the JINI platform, demonstrates a practical working system which serves as a feasibility study, as well as the first step in realizing such a technology.

Although computer graphics games and animations have been popular for more than a decade, recently personal computers evolved to support real-time, realistic-looking interactive games. OpenGL, a technology standard to develop CG applications, has had incredible momentum in both the professional and consumer markets. Once only the domain of production houses, OpenGL has grown to be the standard for graphics programming on all platforms, personal computers, and workstations. Now more than ever, people are eager to learn about what it takes to make such productions, and how they can be a part of them. Current literature on how to make movies/games focus more on the technology (OpenGL, DirectX, etc) and their APIs rather than on the principles of computer graphics. However, understanding these principles is the key to dealing with any technology API. The aim of "Principles of Computer Graphics and OpenGL" is to teach readers the principles of computer graphics. Hands-on examples developed in OpenGL illustrate the key concepts, and readers develop a professional animation, following traditional processes used in production houses. By the end of the book, readers will be experts in the principles of computer graphics and OpenGL. They will be able to develop their own professional quality games via the same approach used in production houses.

The systems used to process data streams and provide for the needs of stream-based applications are Data Stream Management Systems (DSMSs).

This book presents a new paradigm to meet the needs of these applications, including a detailed discussion of the techniques proposed. Ii includes important aspects of a QoS-driven DSMS (Data Stream Management System) and introduces applications where a DSMS can be used and discusses needs beyond the stream processing model. It also discusses in detail the design and implementation of MavStream. This volume is primarily intended as a reference book for researchers and advanced-level students in computer science. It is also appropriate for practitioners in industry who are interested in developing applications.

Face recognition has been actively studied over the past decade and continues to be a big research challenge. Just recently, researchers have begun to investigate face recognition under unconstrained conditions. Unconstrained Face Recognition provides a comprehensive review of this biometric, especially face recognition from video, assembling a collection of novel approaches that are able to recognize human faces under various unconstrained situations. The underlying basis of these approaches is that, unlike conventional face recognition algorithms, they exploit the inherent characteristics of the unconstrained situation and thus improve the recognition performance when compared with conventional algorithms.

Unconstrained Face Recognition is structured to meet the needs of a professional audience of researchers and practitioners in industry. This volume is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science.

3D Face Processing: Modeling, Analysis and Synthesis introduces the frontiers of 3D face processing techniques. It reviews existing 3D face processing techniques, including techniques for 3D face geometry modeling; 3D face motion modeling; and 3D face motion tracking and animation. Then it discusses a unified framework for face modeling, analysis and synthesis. In this framework, the authors present new methods for modeling complex natural facial motion, as well as face appearance variations due to illumination and subtle motion. Then the authors apply the framework to face tracking, expression recognition and face avatar for HCI interface. They conclude this book with comments on future work in the 3D face processing framework.
3D Face Processing: Modeling, Analysis and Synthesis will interest those working in face processing for intelligent human computer interaction and video surveillance. It contains a comprehensive survey on existing face processing techniques, which can serve as a reference for students and researchers. It also covers in-depth discussion on face motion analysis and synthesis algorithms, which will benefit more advanced graduate students and researchers.

This book covers the MPEG H.264 and MS VC-1 video coding standards as well as issues in broadband video delivery over IP networks. This professional reference is designed for industry practitioners, including video engineers, and professionals in consumer electronics, telecommunications and media compression industries. The book is also suitable as a secondary text for advanced-level students in computer science and electrical engineering.

The book serves as a collection of multi-disciplinary contributions related to Geographic Hypermedia and highlights the technological aspects of GIS. Specifically, it focuses on its database and database management system. The methodologies for modeling and handling geographic data are described.

It presents the novel models, methods and tools applied in Spatial Decision Support paradigm.

This book covers various aspects of spatial data modelling specifically regarding three-dimensional (3D) modelling and structuring. The realization of "true" 3D geoinformation spatial systems requires a high input, and the developmental process is taking place in various research centers and universities around the globe. The development of such systems and solutions, including the modelling theories are presented in this book.

-Presents state-of-the-art in visual media retrieval.

-Coverage of adaptive content-based retrieval systems and techniques in image and video database applications.

-Includes a novel machine-controlled interactive retrieval (MCIR) method that optimizes image search in distributed digital libraries over the Internet.

This book is a groundbreaking resource that covers both algorithms and technologies of interactive videos. It presents recent research and application work for building and browsing interactive digital videos. The book deals mainly with low-level semi-automatic and full-automatic processing of the video content for intelligent human computer interaction. There is a special focus on eye tracking methods.

This volume introduces machine learning techniques that are particularly powerful and effective for modeling multimedia data and common tasks of multimedia content analysis. It systematically covers key machine learning techniques in an intuitive fashion and demonstrates their applications through case studies. Coverage includes examples of unsupervised learning, generative models and discriminative models. In addition, the book examines Maximum Margin Markov (M3) networks, which strive to combine the advantages of both the graphical models and Support Vector Machines (SVM).

th The 11 Working Conference of IFIP WG 8.6, Open-IT Based Innovation: Moving Towards Cooperative IT Transfer and Knowledge Diffusion, organized in Madrid in October 22-24, 2008, follows the series started in Oslo in 1995 and continues in the footprints of the past year's conference in Manchester. This year, although the Madrid Conference addresses the usual topics covered in previous WG8.6 conferences, the emphasis is on the issue of open innovation and its relationships with technology transfer and diffusion in the field of information technology. This issue is deeply modifying the way that knowledge is generated, shared, transferred, diffused, and used across the world as a side effect of globalization. It affects the organizational structure, partnerships, roles assumed by stakeholders, and technology transfer and diffusion models and instruments. Industry, academia, and governments are simultaneously concerned. Although the concept applies to all industrial sectors, IT companies were early innovators. The analysis of the contents of this book allows the identification of some trends in technology transfer and diffusion issues as a part of the innovation process. The same problem is addressed in very different ways and extrapolation is not straightforward. Even innovation terminology is not clearly shared by different subcultures in the field.

Multimodal Video Characterization and Summarization is a valuable research tool for both professionals and academicians working in the video field.

This book describes the methodology for using multimodal audio, image, and text technology to characterize video content. This new and groundbreaking science has led to many advances in video understanding, such as the development of a video summary. Applications and methodology for creating video summaries are described, as well as user-studies for evaluation and testing.

In the present digital revolution we often seem trapped in a Kafkaesque world of technological advances, some desired, some disliked or even feared, which we cannot influence but must accept. This book discusses the urgent need to redress this situation. The authors argue that technologies succeed or fail according to their relevance and value to people, who need to be actively engaged in order to create shared visions and influence their implementation.

Biometric user authentication techniques evoke an enormous interest by science, industry and society. Scientists and developers constantly pursue technology for automated determination or confirmation of the identity of subjects based on measurements of physiological or behavioral traits of humans.

Biometric User Authentication for IT Security: From Fundamentals to Handwriting conveys general principals of passive (physiological traits such as fingerprint, iris, face) and active (learned and trained behavior such as voice, handwriting and gait) biometric recognition techniques to the reader. Unlike other publications in this area that concentrate on passive schemes, this professional book reflects a more comprehensive analysis of one particular active biometric technique: handwriting. Aspects that are thoroughly discussed include sensor characteristic dependency, attack scenarios, and the generation of cryptographic keys from handwriting.

Lessons learned in the last several years have given clear indications that the prediction and efficient monitoring of disasters is one of the critical factors in decision-making process. In this respect space-based technologies have the great potential of supplying information in near real time. Earth observation satellites have already demonstrated their flexibility in providing data to a wide range of applications: weather forecasting, person and vehicle tracking, alerting to disaster, forest fire and flood monitoring, oil spills, spread of desertification, monitoring of crop and forestry damages.

This book focuses on a wider utilisation of remote sensing in disaster management. The discussed aspects comprise data access/delivery to the users, information extraction and analysis, management of data and its integration with other data sources (airborne and terrestrial imagery, GIS data, etc.), data standardization, organisational and legal aspects of sharing remote sensing information.

Here is a thorough, not-overly-complex introduction to the three technical foundations for multimedia applications across the Internet: communications (principles, technologies and networking); compressive encoding of digital media; and Internet protocol and services. All the contributing systems elements are explained through descriptive text and numerous illustrative figures; the result is a book well-suited toward non-specialists, preferably with technical background, who need well-composed tutorial introductions to the three foundation areas. The text discusses the latest advances in digital audio and video encoding, optical and wireless communications technologies, high-speed access networks, and IP-based media streaming, all crucial enablers of the multimedia Internet.