Deepening the separation of concerns in the implementation of multimedia systems

Abstract

The presentation of multimedia content requires devices with proper computational resources to guarantee intermedia synchronization requirements. When a multimedia system is executed in resource-constrained devices, some synchronization mismatches may occur. This problem becomes harder to solve when considering support for features like user interaction, systemic resilience, and distributed multimedia processing. This paper discusses the separation of concerns between multimedia presentation orchestration and multimedia content decoding and rendering. A multimedia system architecture and its implementation are also presented in this paper, where the separation of concerns goes beyond modularization by being deeply realized as process isolation. This design decision not only assures improved system resilience to the proposed solution but also enables it to be applied in distributed multimedia processing/presentations. Experiments carried out have indicated that the presentation orchestration does not require much resource, and may be run on lightweight devices. On the other hand, multimedia decoding/rendering is suitable to run on devices that are more resourceful.