Design of the integrator to work with HyTime

Abstract

In order to produce an Interactive MultiMedia Application (IMMA), the developer of that application needs a set of tools for such tasks as capturing, modifying, editing, sequencing, synchronizing, archiving, versioning, and backing up. The heart of this set of tools is an Integrator which can be used by the developer to assemble various multimedia objects into an IMMA and provide the end-user with ways of interacting with that IMMA.

This work focuses on that essential tool - the multimedia Integrator. The Integrator uses a graphical interface that exploits a notation like that of a musical score. The IMMA produced by the Integrator is inherently parallel and includes elements required to define the asynchronous nature of applications, along with a standard set of multimedia objects. The timing and synchronization representation used by the Integrator is based on the model presented by the HyTime standard group. We also have explored the representation of our objects and their attributes according to the Multimedia Hypermedia Expert Group (MHEG) standard model as defined by the MHEG committee.

This work formalizes the design of the Integrator and its constructs using the HyTime Draft International Standard (ISO/IEC DIS 10744). Multimedia application objects and their attributes are described, timing and synchronization aspects of the Integrator and some examples of IMMAs are explained, and several of these examples using the HyTime document structuring language are given.