TVMS: the visual multicast system

The Internet explosion is driving the need for multiple-stream multimedia presentation systems, which provide multiple users with smooth multimedia services such as movie distribution and telemedicine. These kinds of visual systems are composed of multiple media streams, such as video, audio, text, and image streams, which medium volume is large. Therefore, it is a real challenge to have smooth multiple-stream multimedia presentations over Internet, which usually provides insufficient network bandwidth. In this paper, we propose and develop a multiple-stream multimedia middle-ware named TVMS (The Visual Multicast System). TVMS (i) provides a flexible authoring tool to allow users to author a multiple-stream multimedia presentation in a multicast environment and (ii) achieves smooth multimedia presentations with the temporal control mechanism. This paper describes the major considerations and techniques that are involved in the design and implementation of TVMS. System developers can incorporate TVMS to develop multiple-stream multimedia presentation systems in a multicast environment.