Synchronization in the MAEstro multimedia authoring environment

Reviewer: Jeanine M. Meyer

Drapeau describes the techniques used in the MAEstro environment to achieve synchronization during the playback of distinct components of a multimedia document by distributed resources. The paper provides some background on the MAEstro system, which is a set of applications for UNIX workstations that includes media editors, the authoring application, the messaging system, and the Port Manager. The paper is well written and leads readers through the design process that produced the current version of the system. The author also makes the limitations of the system clear. He cites performance figures for three test cases, giving the difference between the actual performance and what could be viewed as the theoretical minimum. The system is simple and requires authors to adhere to policies and furnish information on their use of resources. The synchronization is limited to what Drapeau terms “coarse-grained,” that is, on the order of one second. Thus, as he admits, it is not sufficient for dubbing voice with video or any other situation requiring real-time synchronization. The paper includes a list of references, but few are actually cited. In particular, no connection is made between this work and synchronization in other domains. Diagrams and more detail on real documents would have improved the paper. Distributed multimedia environments are emerging as significant, and work on the design of real systems will become increasingly important. The author invites readers to examine and modify the MAEstro system itself. It is available via anonymous ftp from the host sioux.stanford.edu in the directory /pub/MAEstro.