The role of streaming in interactive multimedia documents dissemination

Multimedia applications require handling of continuous media and support of a variety of media objects with their temporal and spatial relationships. The paper focuses on the importance of streaming usage for the quality of service for multimedia document playout in distributed environments. We describe two Java-based client-server systems for WWW-enabled delivery of Interactive Multimedia Documents (IMDs) supporting a high level of interaction and distribution of scenario and media. We performed series of tests on client-server systems on both Local Area Networks and on Wide Area Networks. The framework has used RTP/RTCP protocols for delivery of continuous streams over the network. The experiments show and quantify the positive effects of streaming on the quality of IMD presentation.