Nsync-A toolkit for building interactive multimedia presentations

Creating innovative interactive multimedia presentations requires a great deal of time, skill, and effort We have developed a multimedia synchronization toolkit, called Nsync (pronounced 'in-sync1), to address the complicated issues inherent in designing flexible, interactive multimedia presentations. The toolkit consists of two primary components, a declarative synchronization definition language and a run-time presentation management system The synchronization definition language supports the specification of synchronous interaction, asynchronous interaction, fine-grained relationships, and combinations of each through the use of conjunctive and disjunctive operators. Pre-computed playout schedules are too inflexible to deal with asynchronous interaction, and a more adaptive presentation management system is required Nsync's run-time system uses a novel predictive logic to predict the future behavior of a presentation. As the viewer makes decisions, the presentation is updated and new predictions are made in order to maintain consistency with the viewer's wishes and the integrity of the presentation's message.