Implementing external applications in an multimedia authoring environment

In this paper we will present the framework for external application implementation into a timeline based multimedia-authoring tool. Such an environment is usually used for different media implementations defining their temporal and spatial composition. Another important issue of authoring environments is interactivity. Interactivity is a notion often closely linked to keyboard, mouse or some other peripheral input. While keyboard and mouse actions controls are well defined and implemented as special behaviors in specific libraries (Behavior library), such authoring environments lack the support of specific peripheral input such as tactility actions (gloves) and speech (voice input). Since dealing with such input is quite a specific task, an external application is a necessity. Linking this new application (external code) to a multimedia-authoring environment will therefore be the main topic of this article. We conclude with an example of a speech API implementation into timeline-based multimedia authoring tool.