Networking Multimedia Applications - a reminder
Chris Adie <cja@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk>
Via: uk.ac.edinburgh.castle; Fri, 2 Jul 1993 11:28:23 +0100
To: wg-imm@rare.nl, mm-sig@jnt.ac.uk, mmis@mailbase.ac.uk, rem-conf@net.es,
www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch, wg-isus@rare.nl
Subject: Networking Multimedia Applications - a reminder
From: Chris Adie <cja@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk>
Reply-To: C.J.Adie@edinburgh.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 93 11:28:15 WET DST
Message-id: <9307021128.aa24470@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Status: RO
July 1993 IETF Meeting in Amsterdam
BOF Session on
NETWORKING MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS
(MULTIAPP)
The above BOF is scheduled for 1930 to 2200 on Tuesday 13 July
in Room H, RAI, Amsterdam.
BOF Agenda:
1. Introduction
2. Identifying the issues
3. Goals for future work
One or two people have asked if they can formally present research
projects, but it's not that sort of meeting. As you can see from the
abstract below, it is really oriented towards service development within
the Internet. If your research is relevant, please bring it up in the
discussion, but there are no formal slots allocated for speakers within
the BOF.
If you are coming, you may wish to read [the summary of] a RARE report
"Network Access to Multimedia Information". You can fetch this by
anonymous FTP from:
Host: ftp.ed.ac.uk
Directory: /pub/mmaccess
Filenames: report.doc Report in Word for Windows 2 format (binary!)
report.ps Report in Postscript form
report.txt Report in ASCII text form
summary.doc Summary in Word for Windows 2 format (binary!)
summary.ps Summary in Postscript form
summary.txt Summary in ASCII text form
*.*.Z Each of the above files run through Unix
compress program (binary!)
Here's the abstract of what will be discussed at the BOF.
BOF ABSTRACT
============
The ready availability of user-friendly multimedia authoring tools such
as Authorware Professional, Asymmetrix Multimedia Toolbook, Macromind
Director and many more, has stimulated much interest in multimedia
within the user community. Sophisticated interactive multimedia
applications are being developed in many disparate subjects and for a
wide range of purposes. Users are now beginning to ask us, as network
technologists, "how can I make my multimedia application available to
others across the network?".
In a parallel development, existing client-server network information
retrieval tools are being enhanced with multimedia handling features.
Gopher+ for instance has been designed with multimedia data firmly in
mind. The World Wide Web project is currently defining a new version of
its hypertext markup language, to be called HMML - HyperMedia Markup
Language - which includes multimedia support.
A third strand of activity is the emergence of network technologies
capable of carrying audio and video data across the network, initially
driven by multimedia conferencing applications. Network technologies
such as ATM and protocols such as RTP are potentially capable of
handling isochronous multimedia data in an effective way.
This BOF session will focus on issues which link these three strands.
Particular questions to be addressed are:
* What are user requirements in terms of responsiveness, and what demands
this places on the network and server system, and how these might
be mitigated.
* The prospects for making existing interactive multimedia applications
available over the network - eg by writing conversion tools from
proprietary formats to a suitable open format.
* To what extent can existing network information retrieval tools such as
Gopher, WWW, WAIS be used for sophisticated multimedia applications?
What about the tools emerging from the research community such as
AthenaMuse 2 (MIT), Microcosm (U of Southampton), HyperG (U of Graz)?
Do we need another tool, or can we build on what we have?
* How can such tools be enhanced to take advantage of isochronous
data streams?
* What relevance do standards such as HyTime and MHEG have?
* What are the security implications of providing interactive
multimedia applications in an inter-enterprise environment?
The BOF is intended to test interest in the subject, to define issues
that need resoving, and to see whether a WG can be formed to work on
those issues.
Chris Adie Phone: +44 31 650 3363
Edinburgh University Computing Service Fax: +44 31 662 4809
University Library, George Square Email: C.J.Adie@edinburgh.ac.uk
Edinburgh EH8 9LJ, United Kingdom