Advanced Multimedia Systems Using MPEG-21 Digital Item Processing

The key concepts in an MPEG-21 architecture are the digital item, representing multimedia data, and Users which interact with it. MPEG-21 introduced digital item processing, which defines ways to add functionality to the item, creating a dynamic and interactive multimedia format. Moreover, an execution environment has been defined, offering basic functionality on any terminal that supports digital item processing. Although the semantics of this functionality has been standardized, there is much room for interpretation, so a digital item author may not be aware of the actual processing. We propose a solution, compliant with the digital item processing specification, to give the content creators full control on the processing of their items, allowing the creation of advanced predictable multimedia systems in an MPEG-21 environment