Designing a Distributed Multimedia Synchronization Scheduler

Distributed multimedia applications need an effective synchronization strategy to deal with the temporal disturbances introduced into the data streams by the transport and operating systems. An essential part of this strategy is scheduling i.e. determining optimal times for the retrieval of data from the data servers. The CITR News-On-Demand project prototype currently uses a centralized synchronization system which lacks effective high-level scheduling. This paper looks at how to add this functionality without seriously disturbing the components already in place. The proposed solution is a distributed synchronization scheduler, designed and implemented in a way which makes use of the current prototype’s components.