MCAM: an Application Layer Protocol
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REIHE INFORMATIK 1/93 MCAM: An Application Layer Proto col for R. Keller und W. E elsb erg Universitat Mannheim Seminargebaude A5 68131 Mannheim MCAM: An Application Layer Proto col for Movie Control, Access, and Management y Ralf Keller and Wolfgang E elsb erg Praktische Informatik IV University of Mannheim, Germany 1 Intro duction The aim of Op en System Interconnection OSI is to allow the interconnection of heterogeneous and distributed com- puter systems. The proto cols of layers 1-6 are now stan- dardized, and several application layer proto cols have also reached International Standard level, including X.400 for electronic mail and FTAM for le transfer, access, and ma- nagement [13]. What is still missing is a standard for the control, access, and management of continuous media CM. CM-streams suchasmovies have di erent requirements than traditional discrete media e.g. text and graphics in terms of bandwidth, delay, delay jitter, error control and ow control. Every comp onent in a distributed multimedia system has to guarantee these requirements. Considerable work has to b e done to meet the challenge of multimedia data streams. Examples of current research elds are mul- Abstract timedia le systems [23], op erating systems [2], synchroni- zation [22], transmission proto cols [4], network supp ort [5], Most of the recentwork on distributed multimedia sys- and throughput improvement in upp er layers [9]. tems has concentrated on the transmission, synchronization In this pap er we address the application layer layer 7 and op erating system supp ort for continuous media data st- issues of continuous media data streams within the OSI fra- reams. We consider the integrated control of remote multi- mework. From our ongoing work on the XMovie pro ject [19] media devices, such as cameras, sp eakers and microphones, wehave gained exp erience in implementing CM-streams in to b e an imp ortant part of a distributed multimedia system. a network. Wehave learned from XMovie and other pro- In this pap er we describ e MCAM, an application layer archi- jects that low-level stream services can b e implemented on tecture, service and proto col for Movie Control, Access, and to day's computers successfully. Mo dern MAC proto cols for Management in a computer network. The OSI Reference high-sp eed networks, i.e. DQDB and ATM, allow iso chro- Mo del is our framework. We present the proto col data units nous transmission at high data rates [8]. Mo dern transp ort and the Finite State Machine for our application proto col proto cols employ rate-based ow control and forward er- and outline the automatic generation of the implementation ror correction in order to maintain the timing relationship co de for layer 7 from our formal sp eci cation. MCAM al- between sender and receiver [1], [26]. But application level lows complete and integrated control of movie data streams proto cols for CM streams are still missing. and devices in a heterogeneous multimedia network. Keywords: multimedia systems, digital movies, ISO/OSI, CM streams have to b e enriched in layer7by supp ort ser- application layer vices. Wehave identi ed two such services: movie directory and CM equipment control . Both services are absolutely [email protected] necessary for the realization of a multimedia service in a y [email protected] distributed heterogeneous environment. The movie directory is used as a rep ository for movie in- Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material formation, such as digital image format and storage lo cation. is granted provided that the copies are not made or distri- The equipment control service enables the user to control buted for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright CM equipment attached to remote computer systems, e.g. notice and the title of the publicati on and its date app ear, sp eakers, cameras, and microphones. and notice is given that copying is by p ermission of the As- In our mo del a user can access create, delete and select, so ciation for Computing Machinery.To copy otherwise, or manage query and mo dify attributes, and control play- to republish, requires a fee and/or sp eci c p ermission. back or record movies .Thus we call our proto col MCAM c 1993 ACM for Movie Control, Access and Management. Two other approaches to multimedia control in distribu- vironments are the Lancaster Architecture and Bellco- ted en source sink source sink re's Touring Machine. An overview of the two architectures hitectures make use of a rep o- can b e found in [25]. Both arc FILE sitory/name service, and in the Lancaster Architecture it is also p ossible to control CM equipment. But there is one ma- jor distinction b etween these two architectures and MCAM: FILE SHM We separate the control proto col from the CM stream proto- col and include the two new services in the control proto col. Our assumption is that name services and device control ha- e requirements radically di erent from those of continuous v LIVE media streams and should thus b e carried over a di erent proto col stack. unication Sys- In IBM's \Heidelb erg Multimedia Comm source sink tem" equipment control and stream control are also avai- lable but separated from each other [3]. Figure 1: An example of the three movie typ es None of these pro jects provides a formal description of the control proto col, whichwe consider to b e an imp ortant step towards standardization. Directory System. We use the ISO/CCITT directory This pap er is organized as follows. In Section 2, we pre- service and proto col to store and access distributed movie in- sent the mo del of the movie service. Section 3 describ es formation [11]. The X.500 directory standard distingui shes the service de nition. The proto col sp eci cation and use twotyp es of entities: directory user agents DUAs and di- of underlying services is outlined in Section 4. Section 5 rectory system agents DSAs. Arbitrary information can concludes the pap er. b e stored in the entries of an X.500 directory. Therefore its use for digital movie services is straightforward. A user interacts with the directory system via a DUA. 2 Mo del of the Movie Service The directory information is stored by the DSAs. They co op erate to guarantee the consistency of distributed data, 2.1 Streams and Movies and to answer remote and distributed queries. The directory entry for a movie contains at least the fol- Amultimedia application has to handle streams of conti- lowing attributes: a unique name, lo cation a host, typ e nuous media data, e.g. video and/or stereo audio streams. FILE, SHM, or LIVE, format audio or video format, and In this pap er we concentrate on digital movies. Three typ es compression metho d. of movies can b e distinguish ed: FILE , SHM , and LIVE .At A user can query the directory system using the MCAM the b eginning of its lifetime a movie will b e pro duced bya service. He can request information ab out a sp eci c movie source, e.g. a camera LIVE movie. After this it can b e or search for movies of a sp ecial typ e or format. If he has stored on disk for later use FILE movie, transmitted as the authorization he can create, mo dify or delete a movie a data stream through a network or pip ed through shared entry. memory SHM movie. The last step of its career will b e amovie consumer, e.g. a graphic display { a window from Equipment Control System. Most of the CM equip- the user p oint of view LIVE movie. We will see later that ment attached to a computer will supp ort more op erations the three typ es have di erent functions and requirements; than play, pause, resume and stop basic stream op erations. for example live sources cannot b e played backwards. It may b e p ossible to turn, zo om and fo cus a camera, or to The reason whyweintro duce the SHM typ e is for multi- increase or to decrease the volume of a sp eaker. Therefore cast distribution or lters. We can connect a movie source we consider remote equipment control to b e an imp ortant to a shared memory bu er SHM which in turn can b e part of a distributed multimedia system. connected to multiple sinks, implementing an application - Our mo del provides an interface to device op erations. controlled multicast. The SHM can also b e used for ltering, MCAM transmits the user requests to an equipment user compression, etc. An example is shown in Figure 1. agent EUA. The requested op eration is p erformed byan We call an entity reading from an input device and pro- equipment control agent ECA, which is directly connec- ducing a stream on a network a source of a movie and an 1 ted to the CM equipment . All ECAs form the equipment entity consuming a stream by writing on an output device control system ECS, which provides a lo cation-transparent a sink ofamovie. Sources and sinks can b e of either of the access to CM-equipment. three movie typ es FILE, SHM or LIVE. Stream Provider System. The stream provider system 2.2 Functional Mo del SPS provides to MCAM a plain stream service. Such st- ream services have b een prop osed in the literature e.g.