Representation and Storage Modeling in Multimedia Systems

Distributed multimedia systems and applications are characterized by their strong requirements for huge storage spaces and timing synchronization to meet clients demands. Therefore, multimedia data storage has become a critical issue in relation to the Quality of Service (QoS) of multimedia applications. This paper introduces a popularity-based model where multimedia(video) data representation guides data placement on a tertiary storage subsystem. A two–level representation model is considered to capture the frequencies of accesses at external (video objects) and internal (video clips) levels. The video data placement strategies are evaluated and the impact of video data representation model on the overall storage process is investigated and commented. Video data placement is employed on a tertiary storage topology under three well known placement policies governed by the Organ-pipe, the Camel and the Simulated Annealing algorithms. The latter approach proves to be the most beneficial for the overall multimedia system’s performance.