Multimedia information systems: problems and solutions

The paper describes experiments that investigated the use of auditory stimuli (speech and non-speech sound) to communicate data in two information systems. These experiments were performed under a multimedia stock control system and a multimedia e-mail tool. Experiments using the multimedia stock control information system investigated rhythms and timbre to communicate windows and their associated functions as well as the simultaneous rise of speech and sound to communicate a large amount of information to users. Experiments using the multimedia e-mail tool investigated the use of tunes and short pitch sequences with visual stimuli to communicate information in browsing e-mail data. The paper also integrates experimental results front both systems and discusses the incorporation of auditory stimuli in interactive audio-visual or multimedia information systems. Auditory stimuli helped to communicate, complement or reinforce information that users received via the visual channel. These auditory technologies could also benefit visually impaired users of such systems. Results also indicated that the simultaneous use of sound and speech can be useful in the design of interactive multimedia information systems. The inclusion of auditory stimuli (including speech) in the design of information systems has the potential to maximise the volume of information communicated to users.

Multimedia data and information systems manage, communicate, and present multimedia data including text, images, audio and video. We need to ensure that the data is protected from unauthorized access as well as malicious corruption. Digital watermarking techniques that insert hidden copyright messages into the multimedia data are needed. Furthermore, since multimedia data is being used for security applications such as surveillance and monitoring, protecting privacy of the individual is crucial.This presentation will discuss the developments and directions for securing multimedia systems. First we will first issues on incorporating security into multimedia data and information systems. We will review various security mechanisms and access control policies and discuss the applicability of these mechanisms and policies for multimedia data. Second, we will examine the developments of digital libraries, which can be considered to be special kinds of multimedia data and information systems, and discuss various developments on secure digital libraries. Access control models such as role-based access control and copyright protection methods for digital libraries will be discussed. Third, we will discuss the developments in securing multimedia communication systems including VoIP security. Emerging novel techniques in digital watermarking as well as the use of multimedia data for computer forensics analysis will also be discussed. Finally, the applications of multimedia data for surveillance and monitoring as well as video data analysis for national security applications will be discussed. Privacy violations that could occur through multimedia data mining as well as directions for privacy preserving surveillance and privacy preserving multimedia data mining will be discussed.

With the gradual maturity of geographical multimedia information system, applying geographical multimedia information system to urban intelligent traffic management information system and urban traffic sharing information platform can realize unified management and real-time update of traffic information. Through the urban traffic sharing information platform, it can increase the value of information. The multimedia information of the entire intelligent traffic management system can be stored, organized and processed by the shared multimedia information platform. It can more effectively ensure the correctness, comprehensibility and avoid redundancy of data relationships. Then it improves the utilization and transmission speed of multimedia information in the system. The urban traffic multimedia information management system has improved the use efficiency of urban road construction in China. And it also made the traffic multimedia information system more scientific and intelligent. It can also improve its management level and play an important role in urban traffic management. This paper first briefly analyzes the current traffic situation and the development of intelligent traffic multimedia information system in China. The basic concepts of GIS and urban intelligent transportation system based on GIS are introduced secondly. At last, the possibility about GIS as urban intelligent traffic management system sharing multimedia information platform is analyzed. The system framework and the basic function of GIS platform are put forward, and the application of GIS in urban traffic common information platform using the key technical support was discussed. It expounds the application of GIS in urban traffic common multimedia information platform.

Shows ways to integrate different results from several research teams in order to elaborate a multimedia information system design method. We defined a model based on the object paradigm. Many problems, due to object distribution, system federation, intelligent human/computer interface and multimedia (data composition, information of complex structure), have been solved thanks to this model. We also present our model conception process, which draws its inspiration from the design process advocated by the systems approach. The next step of our work is the realization of a CASE tool to design our multimedia information system. We propose to validate these results by elaborating a prototype layout of multimedia learning environments. This paper is organized round three aspects: the definition of a multimedia information system, the integration and cooperation of research axes, and the proposition of a multimedia information system design method.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

In an interactive multimedia information system, users should have the flexibility to browse and choose various scenarios they want to see. This means that two-way communications should be captured by the conceptual model. Digital video has gained increasing popularity in many multimedia applications. Instead of sequential access to the video contents, the structuring and modeling of video data so that users can quickly and easily browse and retrieve interesting materials has become an important issue in designing multimedia information systems. An abstract semantic model called the augmented transition network (ATN), which can model video data and user interactions, is proposed in this paper. An ATN and its subnetworks can model video data based on different granularities, such as scenes, shots and key frames. Multimedia input strings are used as inputs for ATNs. The details of how to use multimedia input strings to model video data are also discussed. Key frame selection is based on the temporal and spatial relations of semantic objects in each shot. These relations are captured from our proposed unsupervised video segmentation method, which considers the problem of partitioning each frame as a joint estimation of the partition and class parameter variables. Unlike existing semantic models, which only model multimedia presentation, multimedia database searching or browsing, ATNs together with multimedia input strings can model these three in one framework.

Combining Fuzzy Information from Multiple Systems

Multimedia information management, which implies all steps from creation and production to distribution and consumption, is a complex and challenging research area. To have a secure and trusted system we need to take into account aspects such as digital rights management (DRM), certification, control and security. As current solutions rely on proprietary architectures and tools, we propose an open architecture, as general as possible and not restricted to a specific standard, which provides trust and rights management in multimedia information systems. We analyse how the elements of the architecture provide trust to the whole value chain by managing multimedia content and digital rights represented using current standards, such as MPEG-21 and OMA DRM, and we compare it with an alternative approach. Then, we illustrate the system operation through a content composition use case, and finally, we present the software tools that we have already developed and the future work.

In different types of information systems, such as multimedia information systems and geographic information systems, object-based information is represented via polygons corresponding to the boundaries of object regions. In many applications, the polygons have large number of vertices and edges, thus a way of representing the polygons with less number of vertices and edges is developed. This approach, called polygon approximation, or polygon simplification, is basically motivated with the difficulties faced in processing polygons with large number of vertices. Besides, large memory usage and disk requirements, and the possibility of having relatively more noise can also be considered as the reasons for polygon simplification. In this paper, a kinematics-based method for polygon approximation is proposed. The vertices of polygons are simplified according to the velocities and accelerations of the vertices with respect to the centroid of the polygon. Another property of the proposed method is that the user may set the number of vertices to be in the approximated polygon, and may hierarchically simplify the output. The approximation method is demonstrated through the experiments based on a set of polygonal objects.

In this chapter, we relax another one of the fundamental assumptions we made in Chapter 1—namely that the system implements the relational data model. Relational databases have proven to be very successful in supporting business data processing applications. However, there are many applications for which relational systems may not be appropriate. Examples include XML data management, computer-aided design (CAD), office information systems (OIS), document management systems, and multimedia information systems. For these applications, different data models and languages are more suitable. Object database management systems (object DBMSs) are better candidates for the development of some of these applications due to the following characteristics[Ozsu et al., 1994b]:

Progressive image coding by hierarchical linear approximation

The cost of data transfers, and in particular of I/O operations, is a growing problem in parallel computing. This performance bottleneck is especially severe for data-intensive applications such as multimedia information systems, databases, and Grand Challenge problems. A promising approach to alleviating this bottleneck is to schedule parallel I/O operations explicitly.

Nowadays, a big part of eLearning applications is web-based, designed with integrated interactive multimedia objects and extensive information exchange among clients and servers. This requires appropriate security measures to be taken to protect users, infrastructure and databases from a variety of threats and attacks. The paper presents the developed multimedia information system for eLearning purposes to train students from the Informatics course. It is realized through object-oriented language C# and Microsoft Visual Studio, ASP.Net, HTML5, CSS3, SQL Server Manager Studio and ToolBook and it is constructed taking into account the importance of security issues for protection the participants in educational process and university resources. The literature overview based on bibliometrics approach is performed to outline the current state in the field of security of multimedia information systems. The findings point out that the security topic is still not in the center of research in the explored in the paper context that exposes the educational assets at risks of attackers’ malicious activities. Also, a predictive model, based on machine learning algorithms is created to present trending issues.

We describe the design of a multimedia database management system for a distributed news-on-demand multimedia information system. News-on-demand is an application that uses broadband network services to deliver news articles to subscribers in the form of multimedia documents. Different news providers insert articles into the database, which are then accessed by users remotely, over a broadband, asynchronous transfer-mode (ATM) network. The particulars of our design are an object-oriented approach and strict adherence to international standards, in particular the Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML) and Hy-Time. The multimedia database system has a visual query facility, which is also described in this paper. The visual query interface provides three major facilities for end users: presentation, navigation, and querying of multimedia news documents. The main focus, however, is the querying of multimedia objects stored in the database.

Tourism promotion needs multimedia information system

A computerised information system with multimedia capabilities is described which supports a network of technical aids information and advice Centres in Italy. The system is currently used by 58 Centres disseminated throughout the Country, mainly run by Local Health Authorities of the National Health Service, and by 10 Centres abroad. The distribution medium is the compact disk CD-ROM. A number of other services (monthly telefaxed bulletins, training programmes, help desk) are provided along with the quarterly distribution of CD-ROMs.