Emerging issues on multimedia distribution

This session has assembled expertise from both the industry and academia, addressing various interesting issues related to multimedia distribution. Two nicely written and well-covered overviews provide good pointers to readers on security and object-based encoding issues in streaming videos. A. Vetro and H. Sun provide a comprehensive overview of MPEG-4 object-based encoding algorithms which are readily being incorporated in emerging video products and systems. Security, the utmost concern for secured distribution and communications, has been nicely reviewed by E.J. Delp and his colleague. This session also includes two practical applications. S. Wilson and C.H. Chu develop a video system with GPS capability for environmental monitoring. F. Davoli and his colleagues at DIST-University of Genoa, Italy and CNIT, Italian National Telecommunications Consortium, present their LABNET Project, which will enable enhanced multimedia remote device control such as conducting on-line real-time experiments. Finally, H. Liu, N. Ansari and Y.Q. Shi present on-line dynamic bandwidth algorithms that are effective in reducing CLR and improving resource utilization.