Synchronization and continuity are essential for multimedia presentation, but because network resources and available bandwidth are both limited, synchronization quality and continuity quality have to be traded off in response to the fluctuating network conditions. This paper therefore introduces an algorithm for intramedia synchronization with adaptive quality of service (QoS) control handled at different layers of multimedia streams. The work described here is an extension of our earlier proposal of a synchronization algorithm by delay compensation protocol with two resynchronization mechanisms: retrieval offset adjustment and data unit skipping. That algorithm has been extended by the introduction of QoS control mechanisms in the QoS plane of a distributed control platform. The extended approach results not only in better synchronization and continuity, but also integrates the QoS adjustment into the existing architecture. Unexpected QoS variations are coped with by an adaptive QoS control designed to maintain the desired application qualities within the fluctuating environment. Simulations implemented on a UDP/IP network have verified the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In this paper, we propose an idea for intramedia synchronization control using a method of end-to-end delay monitoring to estimate future delay in delay compensation protocol. The estimated value by Kalman filtering at the presentation site is used for feedback control to adjust the retrieval schedule at the source according to the network conditions. The proposed approach is applicable for the real time retrieving application where `tightness' of temporal synchronization is required. The retrieval schedule adjustment is achieved by two resynchronization mechanisms-retrieval offset adjustment and data unit skipping. The retrieval offset adjustment is performed along with a buffer level check in order to compensate for the change in delay jitter, while the data unit skipping control is performed to accelerate the recovery of unsynchronization period under severe conditions. Simulations are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. It is found that with a limited buffer size and tolerable latency in initial presentation, using a higher efficient delay estimator in our proposed resynchronization scheme, the synchronization performance can be improved particularly in the critically congested network condition. In the study, Kalman filtering is shown to perform better than the existing estimation methods using the previous measured jitter or the average value as an estimate.