A synchronization and flow control scheme for interactive multimedia-on demand (MOD) systems

Synchronization control with VCR-like user interactions in the multi-stream environment is very complicated and difficult. The main reasons are that: (i) those media units stored in the client buffers and flowing in the networks may be either useful or useless when the user interaction is issued, and (ii) the servers´ media transmission should be adjusted according to the presentation status of the client. Additionally, different VCR-like user interactions have their own processing considerations, which result in different control schemes for different VCR-like user interactions. We propose some control schemes to handle interactive multimedia communication in the distributed multi-stream environment and develop an MOD system on SUN SPARC workstations accordingly