Synchronization of multimedia streams over packet-switched networks

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to digital@library.tamu.edu, referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references.Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.Continuing advances in data compression and network technology have made it possible to transmit real-time multimedia data over packet-switched networks. In the past, compression has been the most dominant issue involved in making this possible. Today, other issues such as Quality of Service (QoS) and synchronization are gaining in importance. The objective of this research is to provide a method for playout synchronization of multimedia data that has been transmitted over a packet-switched network. Synchronization is necessary to reconstruct the temporal relation between streams as it existed at the source. This relation becomes distorted between capture and playout due to the many variable delays encountered in the coding and transmission processes. A discussion of the issues involved in such real-time communications over networks is given and an overview of previous strategies for looking at synchronization is presented. An algorithm for synchronization is then presented that is based on a new concept of relative end-to-end delay difference between media streams. Experiments with different strategies were performed under varying network and processing loads to test the accuracy of the algorithm and the results of these experiments are presented