Transcoding in Online Rich-Media Edutainment: a Dynamic Approach Based on Content/Context Awareness

Abstract

The use of adaptive systems provides means to ensure anytime, anywhere and any device entertainment experiences for heterogeneous players. In this paper, we present an approach to dynamically transcode edutainment contents and to facilitate user interactions in context-aware scenarios. We focus on those typologies of interactive online applications, for which edutainment activities are structured as a combination of delivery of rich media contents interleaved with interactive choices made by the users (e.g., multimedia quizzes). As a matter of facts, today's edutainment contents are mostly produced to be delivered through TV or broadband networks. Thus, typically they are not encoded to be used in nomadic contexts. It turns out that the use of an adaptation process (based on user profiles) results as an important tool to face with the poor computational and networking capabilities of (mobile) devices. Moreover, a higher level of accessibility can be guaranteed to users with disabilities, since contents are transcoded based on user preferences. Results gathered from a real evaluation assessment show the viability of our solution.