See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2362328 An Integrated Authoring And Presentation Environment For Interactive Multimedia Documents Article · June 2001 Source: CiteSeer CITATIONS READS 11 28 4 authors , including: Cécile Roisin Loay Sabry Ismail University of Grenoble Qatar University 78 PUBLICATIONS 865 CITATIONS 31 PUBLICATIONS 344 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Structural Health monitoring using Wireless Sensor Networks View project IoT-Based Fire Alarm System View project All content following this page was uploaded by Cécile Roisin on 06 February 2013. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
AN INTEGRA TED A UTHORING AND PRESENT A TION ENVIR ONMENT F OR INTERA CTIVE MUL TIMEDIA DOCUMENTS M. JOURD AN, N. LA Y AID A, C. R OISIN, L. SABR Y-ISMAIL OPERA pr oje ct, INRIA R h^ one-A lp e s 655 A venue de l'Eur op e, 38330 Montb onnot, F r anc e email: f Muriel.Jour dan, Nabil.L ayai da, Ce cile.R oisin, L o ay.Sabry g @inrial p es .fr Abstract In this pap er, w e presen t our con tribution to meet the main require- men ts for pro viding an authoring en vironmen t for in teractiv e m ultimedia do cumen ts. The particularit y of our approac h is to consider m ultimedia authoring as a whole, from sp eci�cation issues to execution requiremen ts. The results of these theoretical w orks are v alidated in to a real running application called Madeus. 1 In tro ducti on The recen t adv ances in m ultim edia systems, together with the adv en t of high sp eed net w orks, ha v e lead to the emergence of a new generation of applica- tions and will considerably a�ect the existing ones. In particular, h yp ermedia applications lik e the WWW originally designed for text and simple graphics are mo ving to w ards a seamless in tegration of data lik e audio, video, plugins and legacy programs (applets). In con trast to the static nature of text-orien ted do cumen ts, the addition of time-based media ob jects to do cumen ts requires the consideration of another dimension of their underlying arc hitecture: the do cumen t dynamics or tem- p oral dimension. Basic media ob jects, lik e video, ha v e in trinsic durations and they can b e temp orally organized b y the author. This temp oral organization, so-called the temp or al sc enario of the do cumen t, raises a n um b er of problems and in spite of the big amoun t of researc h w ork ac hiev ed in this area, these is- sues are still far from b eing mastered. W e ha v e iden ti�ed four main asp ects to b e considered when designing a m ultim edia do cumen t authoring en vironmen t: � Expressiv eness: It measures the abilit y of the temp oral language to co v er all the p ossible scenarios. � Consistency c hec king: It ensures that the scenario sp eci�ed b y the author is consisten t during the edition phase.
2 � Simplicit y: It measures the abilit y of naiv e users in using the authoring to ol. � Run-time monitoring of the presen tation: This requiremen t is related to the presen tation la y er and its abilit y to la y out the do cumen t in compli- ance with the author's sp eci�cation. This pap er addresses these di�eren t issues, from the do cumen t sp eci�ca- tion, construction and manipulation to the application arc hitecture and orga- nization. The w ork ac hiev ed is presen ted through Madeus: an exp erimen tal authoring and presen tation to ol dev elop ed in our pro ject. The pap er is organized in t w o parts. In the �rst one, w e explain the ab o v e-men tioned issues, outlining the problems raised b y eac h of them. In the second part of the pap er, w e presen t our approac h and the design c hoices that ha v e b een made: �rstly , pro viding the author with a declarativ e sp eci�cation language of m ultim edia do cumen ts; secondly , using an extension of temp oral constrain t net w orks to manage the temp oral scenario of a do cumen t. Moreo v er, w e de�ne a general arc hitecture of the Madeus application to demonstrate the v alidit y of the t w o ab o v e-men tioned c hoices. 2 Multimedi a authoring issues 2.1 Example of a F amily Pr esentation Let us consider the example of a m ultim edia do cumen t presen ting a family of four mem b ers. Eac h p erson can b e presen ted b y a sequence comp osed of a still picture of him when he w as a bab y , a short video ab out his life (its duration is ab out one min ute) and a recen t photo. Then eac h of these three elemen ts is asso ciated with textual elemen ts whic h giv es some commen ts to the pictures. A t an y time, the reader of the do cumen t can in terrupt the video in order to get in to the presen tation of the last still picture. The sequence (named S in the rest of the pap er) is comp osed of the three elemen ts previously men tioned, the three asso ciated textual parts and the button of in teraction. In addition, eac h family mem b er can add a p ersonal audio message (its duration is ab out 1 min ute and 30 sec.). This audio message m ust start with the sequence S and m ust end b efore it. Fig. 1 presen ts a p ossible execution of the scenario for one mem b er of the family . In this execution, the reader (b y clic king on the but ton) in terrupts the video 40 seconds after its b eginning. The �rst screen of the do cumen t is comp osed of a still picture of all the mem b ers of the family . The reader can c ho ose to pla y the presen tation of one p erson. Once this presen tation ends, the �rst screen sho ws up again.
3 Figure 1: P ossible execution for the presen tation of one p erson 2.2 Expr essiveness The �rst requiremen t is related to the kind of temp oral scenario that an au- thoring system allo ws an author to express. W e presen t in the follo wing the four basic features that w e consider necessary to build realistic scenarios. � A wide v ariet y of basic ob jects: basic elemen ts lik e text, video, audio, still pictures, virtual animation, JA V A applets should b e supp orted. Button It is necessary to distinguish b et w een t w o kinds of ob jects: con trollable ob jects whose duration v alues can b e c hosen b y the system from a range SP1 Video SP2 of p ossible v alues, and uncon trollable ob jects whic h tak e a duration v alue at the presen tation T1 time. F or instance, T2 a video duration T3 can ha v e a range of p ossible v alues dep ending on its acceptable pla ying rates. W e kno w Audio the lo w er and upp er b ound v alues, but w e cannot predict its e�ectiv e v alue during the presen tation. Time (sec) 0 40 80 95 � Global and lo cal in teractions: The idea is to pro vide the reader with t w o kinds of in teractions: global ones whose scop e is to in terrupt all the curren t activities in the do cumen t. In our example, the �rst screen is comp osed of a set of global in teractions. A t the opp osite, the button whic h in terrupts the video in the sequence is a lo cal in teraction since it do es not in terrupt the audio message whic h is activ e at the same time of the video. A user-in teraction is a t ypical uncon trollable ob ject whith no upp er b ound. � Causal relations b et w een ev en ts: Some b eha viors of a scenario can b e expressed as causal relationships b et w een temp oral ev en ts (start or end of ob jects). In our example, this is the case with the button asso ciated to the video: if the reader clic ks on it, the video is in terrupted.
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