Product Description
From the Inside Flap
Part IV of this book discusses watermark technologies. This part of discussion is relatively new in the area of multimedia computing. With the growing of Internet users, it is likely that entertainment data, such as MP3 audio records and MPEG video, as well as still images are transmitted on the Internet. It is important for vendors to have their copyright protection signatures embedded into these multimedia records. Watermark of multimedia can be embedded into MP3 audio, video, and image records, without seriously affect the presentation quality of the records. Techniques include embedding signature, logo, text, as well as audio information into these entertainment records. A strong watermark technique should defense itself from various types of attacks, as well as prevent the destruction of signatures from data compression. With the watermark embedded, multimedia records are delivered to the end user.
On the other hand, the delivery of multimedia information is time-sensitive. Synchronization solutions to multimedia streams can be divided into two parts: intra-stream synchronization and inter-stream synchronization. For instance, an intra-stream synchronization solution involves the encoding of time stamps or the realization of other techniques to ensure audio and animation are synchronized in a video clip. The synchronization technique can be extended to include multiple streams (e.g., a video clip is synchronized with a slide show). Moreover, quality of services (QoS) of multimedia data may involve real-time constraints, especially when the service is distributed among workstations linked by networks. Solutions to QoS involve different levels of network protocols, as well as the construction of efficient network infrastructure. These problems will be discussed in part V.
The discussions in previous chapters contain technical issues, such as specification, design, and algorithms to the research topics of multimedia databases. Part VI includes real applications in image and video databases, VR technique, and media synchronization solution. The last part (Part VII) of this book will further point out other possible solutions in the future.
The audiences of this book are senior or graduate students major in computer science, computer engineering, or management information system (MIS), as well as professional instructors, and multimedia product developers. Readers can benefit from this book in searching for state-of-the-art research topics for their research, as well as in the understanding of techniques and applications in content-based information retrieval, watermarking, and distributed multimedia database systems. This book can be used as a textbook in senior research seminar, as well as graduate courses. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
