Design of an MPEG-4 BIFS-based GUI tool and its application to network game

Abstract

MPEG-4 is an international standard of an object-based multimedia coding. Because of its object based nature, it facilitates functionalities required by some recent and upcoming multimedia applications. An MPEG-4 scene is composed of several objects, and hence synchronization of multiple object streams and spatio-temporal positioning of audio-visual objects require additional information that is scene description. For the scene description, MPEG-4 has developed Binary Format for Scenes (BIFS), which enables grouping of audio-visual objects, defining attributes of audio-visual objects, and changing the behavior of audio-visual objects. However, users cannot manipulate audio-visual objects beyond the scope of initial scene description provided by the scene``s author. Thus, this thesis proposes a system architecture with a BIFS modifier. The BIFS modifier receives the nodeID at which the user event happens, and finds out corresponding BIFS information in the scene graph. Then, the BIFS modifier generates BIFS update commands and sends out them. The proposed system architecture was implemented on a target application - the network game assuming peer-to-peer scenario.