Adaptive Multimedia Messaging based on MPEG-7 – The M-Box

This paper presents a case study of an adaptive multimedia message box (M-Box) based on MPEG-7 technology. To enable a bi-directional communication, MPEG-7 related techniques such as the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) are incorporated into the M-Box. MPEG-7 descriptions for the multimedia access, user preferences, and media summarization are instantiated and transmitted along the media content of the messages. These components allow to set up a message center which integrates different kinds of structured messages containing media elements such as video, voice and text. They also provide access to these messages with a variety of different devices. The paper analyses the scenario, gives a specification of the application requirements, and describes an implementation of the M-Box.