Development of the Multipurpose Integrated

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Presentation System Based on the CCM Algorithm. Rustam Asnawi ... instance in security area, a security officer want to watch the preview of .... arbitrary device configuration. .... display, flash display, ppt display and camera display window).
Development of the Multipurpose Integrated Multimedia Presentation System Based on the CCM Algorithm Rustam Asnawi

Wan Fatimah Bt Wan Ahmad

Computer and Information Sciences Department Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia Phone: +60175663357 Email: [email protected]

Computer and Information Sciences Department Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia Phone: +60125151100 [email protected]

ABSTRACT Today multimedia has been utilized within almost all of human’s life sectors. People use many file types of each multimedia element such as file type of videos, audios, images, graphs, animations, texts and also live video streaming. Nevertheless commonly people use a different application for presenting those each multimedia element files type. This paper describes a multipurpose integrated multimedia presentation system (IMPS) based on channel controller model (CCM) algorithm. By developing and applying the CCM algorithm into the existing multimedia player (as a result of our previous research), it can be improved and become an integrated multimedia presentation system. This application system’s performance can be operated in many modes of multimedia players, video previewing and capturing, and slide viewer. It implies on progressing the IMPS can be used in many areas of human’s life. As a result, we have developed the multipurpose IMPS that can be applied in many areas such as educational, entertainment and security.

Categories and Subject Descriptors H.4 [Information Systems Application]: Miscellaneous

General Terms Algorithm, Multimedia Presentation

Keyword Multipurpose, Multimedia Application, Dualview, Channel Controller.

1. INTRODUCTION People currently have used multimedia in various sectors of their life. In their home environment they need multimedia for entertain purpose only such as karaoke, listening music and  

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Dayang Rohaya Bt Awang Rambli Computer and Information Sciences Department Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia Phone: +60195721995 [email protected]

watching movies. A presenter for specific training such as motivation or achievement training usually uses flash animation or power point files. The lecturers in the university and the teachers in public school use various multimedia file types to support their teaching learning process. Some security teams such as in an office or supermarket usually need to use live video streaming from CCTV with automatic video capturing to watch the indoor or outdoor environments. In medical sector, the dentists sometime need a tool for displaying and capturing the appearance a part of inner mouth of their patients to show it in live upon the patient. For presenting various multimedia elements in many areas, generally people utilize various multimedia applications. For instance in security area, a security officer want to watch the preview of CCTV parallel with hearing a music, usually they are use more than one multimedia application. A teacher in educational area needs to present sequentially some movie files in various formats, live video streaming, powerpoint© in order like that: two Flash© files, one DVD file, live streaming, one VCD file, two flv files and one ppt file. Since a delay between playing those files is not allowed so how to do this task? In common way, the teacher or presenter need more than one multimedia presentation application or another way is to convert all of the video files into one file type. Of course, this is a hard working for a presenter that only has a bit experience in media player and video converting. It is not flexible and ineffective task for a presenter or a teacher that must present some various multimedia element file types with various multimedia players. Then, today available media player applications usually only have one file list (media library) for all type multimedia files. There is no feature to switch quickly when playing each file types. It implies make more difficult to the user that needs to switch pleasantly in flexible way between multimedia file types. Also with this style of the user interface, a user is impossible to present more than one type of multimedia files at the same time. Assume a person (user) who needs to show a sequence of tens of images and also playing some songs in mp3 file for the background sound. The user commonly uses two applications to do this task, an image viewer (like ACDsee) for presenting the images files and mp3 player.

   

Most multimedia players support an array of media formats, including both audio and video files. Some media players focus only on audio or video and are known as audio players and video players respectively. Almost all of media players use libraries that designed to help user organize, or catalog, the music into categories such as genre, year, rating or other. Good examples of media players that include media libraries are Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, RealPlayer, Amarok and ALLPlayer. Media Player Classic (MPC) with media codec included [1] and AllPlayer [2] provides more services to accommodate more multimedia file types such as video/audio files, flash© and live video streaming. But both are not utilized the extended desktop feature, only have single file list, and there are no feature to audio/video recording. So these players have not supported dual or multimode player and there is no feature to switch pleasantly between different file types. Another problem, while the user runs the conventional multimedia player application sometime the user’s view would be confused by the display of the output screen and the appearance of its control panel since the control panel view and the output screen occupy same monitor. Currently, there is no multimedia player application that specifically designed to utilize dual view feature. Dual view is a standard feature in modern laptop that enables the user to extend the computer’s desktop twice of its length, so the computer seemly have two monitor separately. Moreover, Steward G, the CEO of gScreen (a computer laptop corporation), recently released a new product that is a special laptop with dual screen feature [3]. This product automatically support dual view feature. Please see Figure 1 below.

model. Mainly, Flip is a presentation coordinator that maintains the status of each object in the presentation. Turban G, et al. [7][8] have developed an educational presentation system that approached by slide-based model with scenarios. Qiong Liu, et al. [9] has built the Environment Picking Image Canvas (EPIC). EPIC is a tool for authoring and replaying presentation on arbitrary device configuration. It also supports multiple displays. Then, a system and method for adaptable presentations system has been developed and patented by Salesin D., et al.[10]. Bailey et al. [11] has developed the Nsync, it is a multimedia synchronization toolkit that consists of two primary components, a declarative synchronization definition language and a run-time presentation management system. Meanwhile the commercial multimedia presentation system that currently available in the market is hardware oriented (made by Crestron) [12]. This commercial MPS needs more additional hardware component and sophisticate user to perform a simple presentation like in class room or home entertainment. This paper describes the presence of multipurpose integrated multimedia presentation system (shorted as IMPS or also we named this product as IMPlayer). Since this application system was developed from the improvement of our previous research [13], the IMPS can accommodate many types of multimedia element files, support multimode media player and dual view feature. We have developed Channel Controller Model (CCM) algorithm that aims to improve our multimedia player in order to be a multipurpose integrated multimedia presentation system. This paper is organized as follow: section one is introduction, section 2 is related work, section 3 describes the improved system architecture, section 4 explain the channel controller model, section 5 is the result, and then the last section is the conclusion.

2. RELATED WORK In the previous research we has developed a multimedia player that has performances such as support dual view and enable to accommodate numerous file types of video, audio, image, and powerpoint©. But this player still does not have Flash© controller feature, live video streaming services and not support multimode player [13].

Figure 1. Laptop with dual screen feature Whereas with dual view feature the view of player’s output screen and the view of player’s control panel can be separated. Another benefit by utilizing the dual view feature the private information can be hidden from the audience and the available projected area remains unchanged [4]. It can imply the presenter’s private information as like desktop view can be guarded, so that it can improve the convenience and interest of the audience or student [5]. Figure 2. Outline of the previous system architecture [13]. Since several years ago, some researchers have studied and developed presentation system. Schnepf JA., et al.[6] have developed the Flexible Interactive Presentation Synchronization (Flip). It is a tool for supporting a presentation with event-based

Figure 2 depicts the outline of the previous system architecture that used to develop this player. The system architecture is based on disable-enable of a multimedia channel algorithm.

 

Figure 3. The user interface of the Multipurpose IMPS By this method only one mode of player that can be activated in a time. So this player could not support multimode player. It means that in really this player is not fully integrated multimedia player and still not flexible to be utilized in multipurpose. By adding a real time presentation (live video streaming) will make the player just not only a player but more appropriate to mention it as multimedia presentation [14]. All of this we have updated and improved its system architecture and its channel controller model algorithm to make the player more flexible and powerful. With the flexibility and the multimode player feature, it possible to be a multipurpose integrated multimedia presentation system.

3. SYSTEM OVERVIEW The user interface design of the multipurpose IMPS uses single compact control panel. Consider figure 3, all of the multimedia elements are arranged and controlled in one main window. The control panel has three tab-pages: Main, Flash and Live. The tab-page Main contains three file lists. From left to right, the first file list is a list of selected audio video files, the second file list is list of selected image files and the third file list is list of ppt files. The tab-page Flash contains one file list for take in flash animation files (swf). The tab-page Live contains some menu for controlling the live video streaming. Before getting into system architecture in detail, we will introduce some terminologies used by this sytem. Primary monitor is the main monitor of computer that has dual-display feature (usually for laptop). It uses to display window’s desktop, window’s application program, and also as the main area to show the control panel of the IMPS. Secondary monitor is can be represented as a monitor device, TV device, or LCD projector. Secondary monitor is specially used to display the

output of the IMPS. Multimedia stream: since there has four groups of multimedia file types that represented by the four list of files, so it will impact there are four stream of multimedia: audio stream, video stream, image stream, and flash animation stream. A multimedia stream would be flown to secondary monitor via particular channel. Channel: a channel is an “abstract path” for particular multimedia stream since there has five multimedia streams so need at least five channels. Some additional channels also provide to support live video streaming and voice recording. 3.1 System Architecture The overall improved system architecture of the multipurpose IMPS is depicted in Figure 4. Comparing with our previous system architecture, it more complete due to this system architecture consists of five channels of multimedia stream. The improvement are in the addition of Flash© channel, Live video streaming channel and support multimode player based on the channel controller algorithm. Consider figure 4, the straight line arrows represent the direction for controlling, managing and handling any processes. The dashed line arrows describe for the direction of the multimedia streams. Audio controlling routine will watch the audio/video file list. If the user click or run an audio file in the file list, the system will find the chosen file in particular storage. And then the file will be read and flown to Audio codec to be processed to data voice that can be outputted by sound card. For video controlling routine when the user run a video file in the file list so the system would finding the associate file and then read and flow it to video codec. The video codec will process an input of video file stream into an audio stream that ready to be outputted via

 

soundcard and a video stream that ready to be outputted by VGA card in secondary monitor.  

3.2 The Channel Controller Model The channels controller model is an empirical model that was specifically built to be utilized by the system architecture of the IMPS. By applying the CCM algorithm, our previous player can be improved to be a multipurpose IMPS. The channel controller model has main function to control those five channels of multimedia stream so that the IMPS has performance multimode player and support dualview feature and finally it has performance can be used within multi areas in flexible ways. Figure 5 illustrates the channel controller model. There are five channels (ch1, ch2, ch3, ch4, ch5) as the input into the channel controller: video/audio channel, image channel, ppt© channel, flash© channel, and live video streaming channel respectively. Inside channel controller block actually exists a flow selector that has task to select one or more channels to be flown into secondary monitor depends on the data inputs from multimedia controller routine block.

Figure 4. The improved system architecture On the same way, the image controller routine, flash controller routine and PPT controller routine will watch the associate file list and when the user runs an item in the file list it will be find in storage. After reading the file and then flow its data stream to the appropriate component to be processed. The output is a multimedia stream that ready inputted to VGA card that display it in secondary monitor. The camera controller routine is rather different with other controller. It does not need a file list because this controller directly controls a hardware device such as webcams, CCTVs or others. The controller routine will control the camera like choosing the appropriate device driver, start or stop preview, start or stop recording. Also controlling the display window is in secondary monitor. Meanwhile, all of the display windows (video display, image display, flash display, ppt display and camera display window) are shown in secondary monitor, only one output channel at one time that is allowed to be shown. It is associated with which one channel already chosen by user. Because there are so many (five) channels that used to build the system, it needs a controller to manage and to arrange all of the channel’s processes.

Figure 5. The Channel Controller model Suppose the user via the user interface has chosen an flv file, so the video/audio channel switches into active state. Then the video controller routine will process the selected file and prepare its video stream into the first channel. When the user sets the flow selector to this channel, immediately the screen at the secondary monitor will display the video output. On the same way, if the user needs to play music, viewing some images or powerpoint© file, playing flash file and watching live video streaming, the related channel will be activated and its output would be displayed at secondary monitor. Then, it is possible when a user needs to show some images in a sequence, also parallel needs to hear his some favorite music that exists in audio/video file list. It is possible the user activate the audio/video channel. In this way, the audio/video controller is running, but on the other channel (the image channel) is still active. The channel controller will manage and arrange the both process of channels.

4. THE CCM ALGORITHM The CCM algorithm mainly uses show-hide technique. By this technique, the IMPS can activate more than one multimedia

 

channel. The brief explanation about CCM algorithm is as follow.

the displaying of the image anymore. Also the output of Ch2 can be used like wallpaper of the display area at secondary monitor.

1. Assign Ch1ÆVS, Ch2ÆIS, Ch3ÆPS, Ch4ÆAS, Ch5ÆLS. Ch1..5 are the channel 1 until channel 5 respectively. VS: video stream; IS: image stream; PS: e-presentation or slides stream; AS: Flash© animation stream; LS: live video streaming.

Consider the item number 3, if the user changes the one of the Ch1..Ch5 state into true (it means that user activates a particular channel), and if the flow selector is pointing to that channel, so immediately the output of just activated channel will be shown at secondary monitor and another channel’s output is hidden. But if the flow selector is pointing to another channel, the just activated channel is persistently activated and the system would display the channel’s output that pointed by flow selector at that time. This is the way that this multimedia presentation system can support multimode player.

2. Sch1..5 represent the state of channel 1 until channel 5. Sch1..5 are boolean, it can be false condition (the channel is inactive) or true condition (the channel is active). Sch2 was designed as default active channel and always true. Fsel: flow selector, it is a channel pointer that at a time only point to one channel. Fsel was designed enable to point all channel except channel 5. 3. Set Sch2 = true; FselÆCh2. Set Sch1, Sch3, Sch4, Sch5 = false; If (Sch1 == true)||(Sch3 == true)|| (Sch4 == true)||(Sch5 == true) then { if FselÆSchn (the new selected channel among Ch1,Ch3,Ch4) then { show(Chn); it means show the Chn output to secondary monitor. Hide others output channels } Else { Schn persistently activated but on Hide mode and show(Fsel).

On the item number 5, when the user change the flow selector among ch1...4 and if the selected channel’s status is active so the selected channel’s output would be flown or shown into secondary monitor, but if the selected channel’s status is inactive so the secondary monitor would display the wallpaper.

5. THE RESULT The main result is an integrated multimedia presentation system (IMPS) based on the CCM algorithm that can be used in multi areas (multipurpose IMPS). At least there are three major areas that usually utilize this system i.e educational, entertainment and security area. 5.1 Educational Area Within educational area the IMPS can be operated in many mode of multimedia player pleasantly. But since commonly in the teaching-learning process the presenter (teacher or lecturer) use slide base presentation so the most possible here is the IMPS would be operated as power point viewer, see figure 6.

4. If (Sch1 == false)||(Sch3 == false)|| (Sch4 == false)||(Sch5 == false) then { If Fsel==Ch1 then show(blank color/logo) If Fsel==Ch3 then show(wallpaper); If Fsel==Ch4 then show(blue color); } else { Chn persistently inactive, show(Fsel); } 5. If (FselÆCh1)||..||(FselÆCh4) then If(Schn == true) then show(Chn) Else if (Schn==false) then show(wallpaper) The algorithm is started by initializing and assigning some variables that used to hold each channels. Actually, in this step program will create and provide five particular areas at secondary monitor to be used as an output display for the five channels. Then firstly only one output display (Ch2) will be shown and the others are hidden. Note that the status of Ch2 (image and graphic streams) is never change to inactive condition. From beginning until in the end of running program the Ch2 always active condition. The reason is since the Ch2 is assigned to the image stream so it does not necessary to control

Figure 6. The IMPS is being operated as powerpoint© viewer. Assume that a teacher or a presenter has five ppt files that interrelated one to another (for an example see Figure 7). In the

 

middle while presenting a ppt file sometime a presenter needs to present another ppt file and then back again to previous ppt file. Commonly the presenter has to find the other files in his stored memories. If dual view feature is not utilized it somewhat makes eyesore from the audience and can disturb the flow of the story in teaching. By this IMPS this case is so simple to overcome, by managing and put many ppt files into single file list so the presenter is flexible to select his needed ppt file with double click only.

longer. This case can be overcome by applied hyperlinks refer to these files. But this method is not effective because if the destination file does not exist so it can make trouble on the presentation. Using this IMPS this task become simpler to be done, only place each multimedia element file types into the appropriate file list and then the presenter can present in flexible way. In this IMPS’s user interface has a quick menu to switch fast and pleasantly between presenting different multimedia file types. Back to Figure 3, just click the “Flow to screen” radio button (red ellipse) under the appropriate file list, so the output will be displayed at secondary monitor immediately. 5.2 Entertainment area In this area the IMPS commonly would be operated as MP3 player, MIDI player or DVD/VCD player to perform a karaoke system. See figure 8, since this system support dual view feature so it’s suitable to perform a karaoke system. The secondary monitor is only for displaying the movie pictures and the menus for selecting, managing, and controlling the movie files are in primary monitor.

(a)

(b)

(c )

(a).

(b).

Figure 8. The IMPS is operated as karaoke system, (a). The view of primary monitor (b). The view of secondary monitor

(d) (e) Figure 7. A sample application of IMPS as powerpoint viewer Figure 7.a is the zoom out of the condition of ppt file list before user select a ppt file to be presented. Consider all navigation buttons is disable, ppt information empty and the ppt controller disappear. Figure 7.b is the condition of ppt file list after user select a ppt file by double clicked or click Open+Show button. All navigation buttons are active and ppt controller will appear in front of powerpoint editor/authoring (Figure 7.d). User now can select pleasantly which one slide will be displayed at secondary monitor (Figure 7.e) by clicking one of all slide numbers that available in ppt controller. Within a complicated presentation, the presenter may have a lot of topics and it implies has many multimedia file types to be presented. Each file need interrelation or interlink. For an example in a presentation a slide need to addition remark that stored in image file (JPG, GIF, or BMP) and video files (MPEG, AVI and flv). If these files are included in that slide, it make the file size of ppt bigger and then it will make the execution time is

Another possibility that can be used from the IMPS is as images viewer. Since this IMPS support multimode player so by this IMPS a person can show a sequence of ten of images parallel with hearing a favorite music. 5.3 Security area A security team at an office, hotel, and department store usually use a CCTV security system to help their job like indoor or outdoor surveillance. The available CCTV security system uses some of devices like a TV monitor, Digital Video Recording (DVR) and video compressor. VCR is for recording a sequent of video capturing and video compressor for combining two or more video signal that comes from CCTVs. This IMPS can be operated as like as the CCTV security system. See figure 9, the output of live video streaming is displayed at secondary monitor (can use a TV monitor) and the primary monitor is the view of menus to control the entire attached CCTV cameras in the computer. The result of video capturing is stored in internal memories of the computer

 

the multimedia can be obtained. For instance, in the entertain area user needs multimedia presentation only for karaoke, listening music and watching movies. This user domain does not need more complex multimedia elements or multimedia file types such as graphic file, flash files and power point file.

(a) (b) Figure 9. IMPS is operating as like as CCTV security system (a). The control menus at primary monitor (b) The view of live video streaming at secondary monitor. In order to perform this task, the computer’s VGA card must support dual view feature. The primary monitor is an ordinary monitor and the secondary monitor can be used a mini television. If use a CCTV camera, it must have a TV tuner installed inside the computer, since to process the analog video signal from CCTV must be inputted before via video in pin of TV tuner and then just processed by the MPS.

6. DISCUSSION The development of the IMPS is still improving until this time to get more powerful of IMPS. Actually the IMPS is not only utilized within three areas like mentioned above. Another area that closely utilizes this IMPS is in a dentist practice (medical) area. See figure 10.

A person who has special physical weakness such as a blind man, mute and deaf man perhaps needs only to playback some multimedia file types particularly audio (music) file types. For this special user’s domain, designing the multimedia player is importantly focused on its user interface. One way to help this matter is to design and implement the multimodal user interface for that player. When this IMPS is utilized in medical area, of course its user interface must be different than utilized in educational or security area. For the future, although currently the multipurpose IMPS could be utilized in some sectors or areas but the control panel user interface of this IMPS still has to be improved into personalized user interface.

7. CONCLUSION The algorithm of channel controller model (CCM) with showhide technique has updated the previous algorithm model with enable-disable technique. By applying the show-hide technique in the CCM Algorithm provide a multimode player feature in IMPS. The integrated multimedia presentation system that based on the CCM algorithm can be used in some areas (multipurpose). The developed multipurpose IMPS can be used in some areas such as in educational area, entertainment area, and security area.

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (a) (b) (c) Figure 10.(a). The IMPS control panel. (b). Viewing a part of teeth (c) Combining a live video streaming and flv player. A dentist when examining the inner part of mouth of his patient usually uses a mouth mirror tool. It implies make a low accuracy than uses a high resolution mini camera. Beside that by using a mini camera the output of its live video streaming can be watched by his patient too (Fig.10.b). So between the dentist and his patient can discuss clearly about the patient’s dental problems in order to find the best solution. The dentist can use multimode player of IMPS to improve the patient’s understanding. Like depicted in figure 10.c the dentist uses a combination of live video streaming mode and flv player mode to improve his presentation’s quality upon his patients. In addition we already tried the multimedia player to be utilized by more than 40 teachers from some junior high schools. Almost of the teachers confused about how to use this application at the first time. Some of them said that so many choices, buttons and menus in its control panel. Meanwhile people have used multimedia in various areas for any purposes. Therefore in really many domains of the user of

This work is accomplished at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS and funded in part of graduate assistantship program in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS. It is a continuation of previous author’s work about developing the IMPlayer.

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