The Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a component of the 3G mobile network that has been specified by standards development organisations such as the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and ETSI (European Telecommunication Standards Institute). IMS seeks to guarantee that the telecommunication network of the future provides subscribers with seamless access to services across disparate networks. In order to achieve this, it defines a service architecture that hosts application servers that provide subscribers with value added services. Typically, an application server bundles all the functionality it needs to execute the services it delivers, however this view is currently being challenged. It is now thought that services should be synthesised from simple building blocks called service capabilities. This decomposition would facilitate the re-use of service capabilities across multiple services and would support the creation of new services that could not have originally been conceived. The shift from monolithic services to those built from service capabilities poses a challenge to the current service model in IMS. To accommodate this, the 3GPP has defined an entity known as a service capability interaction manager (SCIM) that would be responsible for managing the interactions between service capabilities in order to realise complex services. Some of these interactions could potentially lead to undesirable results, which the SCIM must work to avoid. As an added requirement, it is believed that the network should allow policies to be applied to network services which the SCIM should be responsible for enforcing. At the time of writing, the functional and structural architecture of the SCIM has not yet been standardised. This thesis explores the current serv ice architecture of the IMS in detail. Proposals that address the structure and functions of the SCIM are carefully compared and contrasted. This investigation leads to the presentation of key aspects of the SCIM, and provides solutions that explain how it should interact with service capabilities, manage undesirable interactions and factor user and network operator policies into its execution model. A modified design of the IMS service layer that embeds the SCIM is subsequently presented and described. The design uses existing IMS protocols and requires no change in the behaviour of the standard IMS entities. In order to develop a testbed for experimental verification of the design, the identification of suitable software platforms was required. This thesis presents some of the most popular platforms currently used by developers such as the Open IMS Core and OpenSER, as well as an open source, Java-based, multimedia communication platform called Mobicents. As a precursor to the development of the SCIM, a converged multimedia service is presented that describes how a video streaming application that is leveraged by a web portal was implemented for an IMS testbed using Mobicents components. The Mobicents SIP Servlets container was subsequently used to model an initial prototype of the SCIM, using a mUlti-component telephony service to illustrate the proposed service execution model. The design focuses on SIP-based services only, but should also work for other types of IMS application servers as well.

Nowadays, there are many multimedia applications, which are usually inaccessible. These applications are often generated in closed communities, such as on universities as diploma thesis. The objective of this work is to create a web interface which will allow access to these multimedia applications, whose authors decided to display the app on the website. Part of the solution will be SDK, enabling developers to make their applications accessible from web.

Dieser Artikel stellt ein Framework zur Generierung von Metadaten der technischen Randbedingungen eines Ingests vor, welches an der Professur Medieninformatik im Rahmen des Projektes ValidAX zur Digitalisierung verschiedener Videokassettenformate entwickelt wurde. Insbesondere werden hierbei die Architektur und der Einsatz näher beleuchtet. / The process of introducing media into an IT-based system during acquisition is called ingest. The appropriate handling of media requires the extraction of additional metadata being realized by automatic extraction and analysis as well as manual annotation. We assume, that metadata about technical constraints of the ingest process itself implies a benefit for the media lifecycle. In this context the challenge is the automation.

This report begins with the presentation of "the state of the art" as well as the foreseen trend in the education system in Mozambique and analyses the present situation in the area utilizing media opportunities for teaching and/or learning. Basing on this analysis, the prevailing problems and the aims (this might need research) of the study shall then be identified and formulated (chapter 1 and 2). The necessity to carry out the study is grounded by the worldwide stormy developments utilizing modern information technology. These developments do also apply to Mozambique as the pre-studies show. A flashback on the history of teaching-/learning system as well as on present solutions utilizing new media and new information as well as communication technology shall be discussed in the third chapter. To this end, the study shall contribute to identify the lacking of previous concepts as well as to introduce an orientation as to the current world sustainable system. The software for training on the market at present show (without doubt) that they reflect developers' imaginations (knowingly or unknowingly) as to what learning and teaching actually is and how this process take place. Basing on this knowledge, it is worth to work out the starting point as to teaching-/learning methodology before working out a conception. In addition, it shall be made clear (in the course of analysis) that the dominating criterion for customizing a teaching-/learning system is that system or its form that has been realised. The contribution of this report, further, is to make the definition of the media more precise by adding new terminology that shall be discussed and viewed from different viewpoints. This shall in turn contribute to a clear and sound understanding of the media. In the past years, a series of different teaching and methodologies concepts on the design of computer-based teaching-/learning environment were developed and discussed. Among them is the so called "anchored instruction" of the cognition and Technology Group based at Vanderbilt University and the Cognitive Apprenticeship developed by Collins, Brown and their co-workers. This shall be dealt with in the fourth chapter. On that basis, and taking other factors into consideration, such as design, functionality, applications scenarios, boundary conditions as well as user backgrounds, a more effective teaching-/learning environment can be predicted and consequently a concrete design proposal can be derived. The guidelines strived as to the design of context-sensitive multimedia teaching and learning environment shall not only be treated intuitive, but implemented technically in a prototype. In so doing they can then be evaluated and adopted. The so evaluated guidelines and other relevant design proposals that can find use in other areas with respect to the demand of the study as a whole shall make the results of this report. The fifth chapter shall describe the development and evaluation of prototype-art "e-Aula" solutions basing on the developed and grounded conception. The conception constitutes of a hybrid solution in the form of training software that supports both freelance as well as classroom learning. This training technology solution is called teaching-/learning environment and it is being characterised through its feature that it embodies two system interfaces having functions (learning environment and teaching arrangement) that basically refer to the same data collection (media) that can be accessed by the in different ways. This function rates "e-Aula" at a relatively higher position in comparison with a number of learning systems. The sixth chapter shall then summarise the important findings of the report and recommend areas for further research. Appendix: e-Aula Suite 1.0 (1,26 MB) Usage: Referat Informationsvermittlung der SLUB / Mit der Arbeit wurde Ein Konzept für eine Hybridlösung in Form von Bildungssoftware entwickelt begründet und evaluiert, mit der sich einmal erzeugte digitale didaktische Medien sowohl für selbstständiges und unterrichtliches Lernen in sog. "Multimedia Learning Environments" als auch für das Lehren über sog. "Teaching Arrangements" nutzen lassen. Anlage: e-Aula Suite 1.0 (1,26 MB) Nutzung: Referat Informationsvermittlung der SLUB

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In response to ideological issues that have emerged the last two decades from feminism, multiculturalism and postmodernism, the introductory art history survey is undergoing major revisions not only in structure and content, but also in instructional methodology. Art history professionals and art educators alike are questioning whether pedagogical methods traditionally employed in the survey are adequate for meeting the goals of visual literacy and development of critical and analytical skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of supplemental study resources for art history survey students, specifically an interactive multimedia (IM) computer program designed to help students acquire and retain a deeper understanding of works of art. Two research questions were asked: Is IM a more effective instructional format than traditional slide study on achievement measures? Will use of IM impact students' levels of understanding and strengthen and direct their choice of search strategies?

Distributed multimedia supports a symbiotic infotainment duality, i.e. the ability to transfer information to the user, yet also provide the user with a level of satisfaction. As multimedia is ultimately produced for the education and / or enjoyment of viewers, the user’s-perspective concerning the presentation quality is surely of equal importance as objective Quality of Service (QoS) technical parameters, to defining distributed multimedia quality. In order to extensively measure the user-perspective of multimedia video quality, we introduce an extended model of distributed multimedia quality that segregates quality into three discrete levels: the network-level, the media-level and content-level, using two distinct quality perspectives: the user-perspective and the technical-perspective. Since experimental questionnaires do not provide continuous monitoring of user attention, eye tracking was used in our study in order to provide a better understanding of the role that the human element plays in the reception, analysis and synthesis of multimedia data. Results showed that video content adaptation, results in disparity in user video eye-paths when: i) no single / obvious point of focus exists; or ii) when the point of attention changes dramatically. Accordingly, appropriate technical- and user-perspective parameter adaptation is implemented, for all quality abstractions of our model, i.e. network-level (via simulated delay and jitter), media-level (via a technical- and user-perspective manipulated region-of-interest attentive display) and content-level (via display-type and video clip-type). Our work has shown that user perception of distributed multimedia quality cannot be achieved by means of purely technical-perspective QoS parameter adaptation.

Recent advances in technology have made it possible to offer educational content online in the form of e-learning systems. The Semantically Linked Instructional Content (SLIC) system, developed at The University of Arizona,is one such system that hosts educational and technical videos online.This dissertation proposes the integration of speech and language technologies with the SLIC system.Speech transcripts are being used increasingly in video browsing systems to help understand the video content better and to do search on the content with text queries. Transcripts are especially useful for people with disabilities and those who have a limited understanding of the language of the video. Automatic Speech Recognizers (ASRs) are commonly used to generate speech transcripts for videos but are not consistent in their performance. This issue is more pronounced in a system like SLIC due to the technical nature of talks with words not seen in the ASR vocabulary and many speakers with different voices and accents making recognition harder.The videos in SLIC come with presentation slides that contain words specific to the talk subject and the speech transcript itself can be considered to be composed of these slide words interspersed with other words. Furthermore, the errors in the transcript are words that sound similar to what was actually spoken; notes instead of nodes for example. The errors that occur due to misrecognized slide words can be fixed if we know which slide words were actually spoken and where they occur in the transcript. In other words, the slide words are matched or aligned with the transcript.In this dissertation two algorithms are developed to phonetically align transcript words with slide words based on a Hidden Markov Model and a Hybrid hidden semi-Markov model respectively. The slide words constitute the hidden states and the transcript words are the observed states in both models. The alignment algorithms are adapted for different applications such as transcript correction (as already mentioned), search and indexing, video segmentation and closed captioning. Results from experiments conducted show that the corrected transcripts have improved accuracy andyield better search results for slide word queries.

The United States is in an emerging period of transition, shifting to online multimedia campaigns. This research attempts to explore general knowledge of multimedia expansion, and through qualitative research methods provide a successful model for the development of an effective promotion tool. Findings from the heuristic study showed users preferences for varying forms of media, thus demonstrating the need to provide content in many different forms. The findings from this study aide in the development of multimedia, and illustrate the need for further studies in the use of multimedia as a promotion tool. / Department of Telecommunications

This Study investigates the effectiveness of a new Instructional Design model for using advanced multimedia in the teaching and learning of photography at university level in Kingdom of Bahrain. A preliminary study revealed that the central problems faced by students are learning key technical aspects of photography coupled with insufficient resources and high student teachers ratio. Advanced multimedia was proposed as an effective tool for teaching and learning photography. A critical review and analysis of existing e-learning resources revealed that such technology might help in teaching and learning, especially subjects that need experience with real instruments like cameras. Through reference to the ASSURE model, Laurillard's conversational model, and insights from Steuer's Classification model, the researcher developed a new instructional design model for using advanced multimedia in photography education [AMPE]. This was field tested in University photography teaching. For the evaluation of the AMPE model a mixed-model design was used, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. In a quantitative evaluation, effectiveness in learning was estimated from the student achievement in a test. A comparison of the opinions of the two groups of students in a specially constructed questionnaire measuring their views of the respective teaching and learning methods was also applied. Finally engagement and enjoyment in learning in the two groups of students were also assessed through questionnaire. The participants‘comments, opinions, and suggestions were obtained through open-ended questions in the questionnaire. The study found that advanced multimedia enhances effectiveness, engagement, and enjoyment in learning photography. The instructional model and associated ―virtual camera‖ seems to be a suitable solution for the lack of real cameras in the classroom environment, and can help in the teaching of difficult technical photographic knowledge in an efficient and practical manner.