A Method and Apparatus for Measuring Media Synchronization

Media synchronization is widely regarded as a fundamental problem in the field of multimedia. While much work has been conducted in this area, and many different solutions have been proposed, no method for obtaining a repeatable, objective measure of synchronization performance exists. Thus, there has been no means for determining the effectiveness of potential media synchronization solutions. In this paper we present an experimental methodology for quantitatively measuring the performance of different media synchronization schemes. We describe a complete (hardware and software) test environment for measuring audio/video synchronization quality of various media players, and we also present empirical performance measurements of an example media player. The results show that external observation is necessary for accurate assessments of synchronization performance. This test and evaluation methodology is applicable to other media delivery systems and can serve as the first step in isolating and quantifying the effects of individual components of a media delivery system.