A software platform for distributed multimedia applications

The paper discusses the functionality that a platform for distributed multimedia applications should provide. Five platforms-Touring Machine, Beteus, Lakes, Medusa and IMA-are presented and evaluated. The paper then introduces a new platform that is geared towards service provision in larger networks. In this platform, application and media processing are logically and per default geographically separated. Applications reside in application pools inside the network and control sets of multimedia terminals in the periphery. The platform is built on top of CORBA, and is thus defined as a set of IDL interfaces. The platform supports application development with high level programming interfaces, and can be further enhanced with tool-kits for special application classes. A tool-kit for teleconferencing applications is presented at the end of the paper