Streaming Media Server Design

-- Discusses the design of streaming media servers in single disk drive and multi-disk platforms.
-- Bonus CD includes a sample streaming media server for hands-on learning, developed at IMSC - the ONLY federally funded multimedia research center.
-- Covers actual techniques and applications, including the theoretical underpinnings and mathematical origins.

This book covers the fundamental issues and advanced techniques that underlie the design of modern, high-performance and large scale Continuous Media (CM) servers on various multi-disk platforms. CM continue to be some of the most demanding data types in many newly emerging applications. Those new applications include digital editing systems, digital libraries, corporate training networks, and entertainment databases (video-on-demand, interactive TV). In order to effectively support CM's large size and real-time-display functions, the design of streaming CM servers has to be quite different from that of traditional file or database systems. The topics included are designed to teach system designers, multimedia applications engineers and other professionals the optimization techniques necessary to maximize the performance of these complex servers for the diversity inherent in CM applications. To illustrate this concept, the book features an accompanying CD complete with a working example of tutorial CM software to experience running a CM server hands-on.