Engineering multimedia systems using multimedia internetworking and Actors

Complexity in developing multimedia systems in heterogeneous environments like Internet demands for customizable toolkits and frameworks which integrate multimedia networking protocols and application models. This paper proposes a component-based approach to engineer distributed multimedia systems which centers on lightweight actors and on the Internet multimedia protocol stack. A multimedia system can be thus visualized as a set of multimedia micro-components called media actors which interact to one another through asynchronous messages. Media actors are clustered in macro components such as lip sync filters, media pumps and players. Such components are mapped onto subsystems which are supported by a time-sensitive and reflective run-time architecture. The paper also exemplifies the proposed approach through case studies.