Modeling and design of the multimedia subsystem of a distributed authoring environment

Abstract

In this paper, the model and architecture of the multimedia subsystem of a distributed authoring environment called VAS (Virtual Authoring System) are presented. VAS is an authoring environment that integrates various tools and provides a common communication basis for the tools and the designers who use them. Its underlying model is based on existing actor models, implementing all the society-modeling capabilities these models exhibit, while the Client Facilitator Consultant model is used to model the systemwise tool behaviour. The Multimedia Distributed Filing System (MDFS) of VAS meets many requirements users have from multimedia systems and uses VAS model to provide system users with transparent access to multimedia objects. MDFS consist of many co-operating servers, which implement VAS actor-based model. To take advantage of many well-established standards, MDFS communications have been implemented upon the Berkeley Unix socket library. The distributed nature of VAS offers a new perspective to the authoring process and the system's object-oriented model has led to an open-ended architecture, which permits the integration of new tools and supports the system's evolution to meet new emerging requirements.