Multimedia Applications discusses the basic characteristics of multimedia document handling, programming, security, human computer interfaces, and multimedia application services. The overall goal of the book is to provide a broad understanding of multimedia systems and applications in an integrated manner. A user enjoys a multimedia application only if all pieces of the end-to-end solution fit together. This means that a multimedia application and its user interface must be developed in an integrated fashion with underlying multimedia middleware, operating systems, networks, security, and multimedia devices.

In this book we will present fundamental information and properties of hypermedia document handling, multimedia security and various aspects of multimedia applications. Especially of interest to the readers will be information about document handling and their standards, programming of multimedia applications, design of multimedia information at human computer interfaces, multimedia security challenges such as encryption and watermarking, multimedia in education, as well as multimedia applications to assist preparation, processing and application of multimedia content.

Ralf Steinmetz is Professor of Multimedia Communications at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, and he is chairman of the Board of the Telemedia Center httc.. Together with more than 20 researchers, he is working towards his vision of "truly seamless multimedia communications". He has co-authored over 200 refereed publications, serves as a member of the board of numerous professional committees, is an ICCC Governor, and is a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM.

Klara Nahrstedt is the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor at the department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urban-Champagne, USA. She is an expert in the area of multimedia systems and networks and focuses onquality of service management problems. Currently, she serves as the editor-in-chief of the ACM/Springer Multimedia Systems Journal.

Autorentext

Prof. Ralf Steinmetz worked for over nine years in industrial research and development of distributed multimedia systems and applications. Since 1996 he is the head of the Multimedia Communications Lab at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. From 1997 to 2001 he directed the Fraunhofer (former GMD) Integrated Publishing Systems Institute IPSI in Darmstadt. In 1999 he founded the Hessian Telemedia Technology Competence Center (httc e.V.).

His thematic focus in research and teaching is on multimedia communications with his vision of real "seamless multimedia communications". With over 200 refereed publications he has become ICCC Governor in 1999; was awarded the ranking of Fellow of both, the IEEE in 1999 and the ACM in 2002.

Prof. Klara Nahrstedt is currently an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Over the last ten years she has been working on various research problems in the area of Quality of Service provisioning for real-time multimedia processing and communication systems and published over 100 papers in leading conferences and journals. She is the editor-in-chief of the ACM/Springer Multimedia Journal, as well as she has served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Computer Networks Journal, Journal on Multimedia Applications and Tools, and ACM Computer Communication Review Journal.

For her research results she was awarded the Early NSF Career Award, the Junior Xerox Award, IEEE Communication Society Leonard Abraham Award for Research Achievements, and the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professorship Chair.

Inhalt

1 Introduction.- 2 Database Systems.- 3 Programming.- 4 Security.- 5 Documents, Hypertext, and Hypermedia.- 6 Design.- 7 User Interfaces.- 8 Multimedia Learning.- 9 Multimedia Applications.