Advanced multimedia management - control model and content adaptation

The delivery and adaptation of multimedia content in distributed and heterogeneous environments requires flexible control and management mechanisms in terminals and in control entities inside the network. In the near future, it is important to reach interoperability between the IETF approaches on multimedia session establishment and control and the MPEG-21 efforts for multimedia streaming and adaptation to bring advanced multimediaservice provisioning and adaptation services towards the customer. MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation (DIA) provides normative descriptions for supporting adaptation of multimedia content, but does not define interactions with transport and control mechanisms. On the other hand, the IETF standardization efforts on multimedia session control provide the necessary transport (e.g. RTP) and control mechanisms (SDP/SDPng). We thus bridge the gap between those approaches by creating a converged XML model that enables the integration of session management and negotiation protocols (e.g. SIP or Megaco) inspired by the XML formats of MPEG-21 DIA and SDPng. We also present preliminary implementation results of the converged model along with concepts and implementation of network-based content adaptation mechanisms through media gateways that enable flexible multimedia management for heterogeneous consumer terminals.