Extended format definition and quality-driven format negotiation in multimedia systems

Multimedia middleware needs to support a wide variety of devices together with their respective data formats. This becomes increasingly relevant and difficult in a distributed environment where new devices and formats can become available at any time and must be taken into account when deciding how to set up a flowgraph of distributed multimedia components.In this paper we present an automatic algorithm for configuring and connecting a high-level flowgraph of multimedia components. Given this abstract flowgraph of participating devices and key components, the algorithm automatically selects necessary additional components, chooses suitable formats, and connects the flowgraph, while trying to achieve the best possible quality.