Synchronization of multimedia data streams in open distributed environments

Abstract

This paper presents a study of synchronization mechanisms for real-time video, audio and text data streams. Synchronization is an important and complex issue when multimedia information, stored at geographically distributed locations, has to be transported to an end-system for presentation via various communication channels. In this paper webriefly review the characteristics of multimedia data streams and the requirements that a network should support for these multimedia systems. An overview of synchronization mechanisms is presented and their applicability in an open distributed environment is discussed. Also the positioning of the synchronization mechanism in the OSI Reference Model is indicated.