Experiments with MHEG Player/Studio: an interactive hypermedia visualization and authoring system

With the growing needs of information sharing and exchange, MHEG-6 (Multimedia Hypermedia information coding Expert Group-part 6) standard is defined so as to provide the international standard for representing common coded interactive multimedia information, presenting and exchanging information using the same syntax and semantics in a heterogeneous environment. We developed a prototype system for visualizing and authoring hypermedia information based on MHEG-6 coded representation. The MHEGPlayer is a visualizing system designed to satisfy the various system requirements of the MHEG-6 and DAVIC (Digital Audio Video Council) standards, including support for various time-critical complicated synchronizations and interactions between MHEG objects on a MHEG-5 Engine and execution elements on a virtual machine. The MHEGStudio is a user friendly interactive integrated authoring system designed to support convenient and simple operations without requiring overcomplicated standard-specific details. We comment on the standard and the overall architecture of the MHEG Player/Studio. A scheme to use MHEG-6 in the WWW (World Wide Web) environment is suggested