Media synchronization between voice and movement of avatars in networked virtual environments

ABSTRACT

This paper studies media synchronization control between voice and movement of avatars constructed by computer graphics (CG) in networked virtual environments. For the control, we adopt the virtual-time rendering (VTR) media synchronization algorithm, which the authors previously proposed. In the VTR algorithm, we choose the voice as the master stream and the movement of an avatar as the slave stream. By carrying out an experiment in which we interactively move both arms of the avatar synchronously with the voice, we assess the media synchronization quality and demonstrate the effectiveness of the media synchronization control.

REFERENCES

• 1: G. Suzuki and K. Shimamura. A design of communication environment for networked multimedia ecosystem. IEICE Trans. Commun., E78-B(10):1353--1357, October 1995.
• 2: Jefferson Han , Brian Smith, CU-SeeMe VR immersive desktop teleconferencing, Proceedings of the fourth ACM international conference on Multimedia, p.199-207, November 18-22, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/244130.244199]
• 3: K. Fujikawa , T. Taira , S. Oh , D. Kado , S. Shimojo , H. Miyahara, A Quality Control Mechanism for Networked Virtual Reality System with Video Capability, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems, p.214, June 28-July 01, 1998 [doi>10.1109/MMCS.1998.693643]
• 4: Hideyuki Nakanishi , Chikara Yoshida , Toshikazu Nishimura , Toru Ishida, FreeWalk: A 3D Virtual Space for Casual Meetings, IEEE MultiMedia, v.6 n.2, p.20-28, April 1999 [doi>10.1109/93.771370]
• 5: Chris Greenhalgh , Steve Benford , Gail Reynard, A QoS architecture for collaborative virtual environments, Proceedings of the seventh ACM international conference on Multimedia (Part 1), p.121-130, October 30-November 05, 1999, Orlando, Florida, United States [doi>10.1145/319463.319479]
• 6: G. Blakowski and R. Steinmetz. A media synchronization survey: Reference model, specification, and case studies. IEEE J. Sel. Areas in Commun., 14(1):5--35, January 1996.
• 7: Y. Ishibashi , S. Tasaka, A comparative survey of synchronization algorithms for continuous media in network environments, Proceedings of the 25th Annual IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, p.337, November 08-10, 2000
• 8: Y. Ishibashi, S. Tasaka, and T. Iwama. Adaptive QoS control for video and voice traffic in networked virtual environments. In Proc. IEEE ICCCN'00, pages 638--642, October 2000.
• 9: Y. Ishibashi, K. Tomaru, S. Tasaka, and K. Inazumi. Group synchronization in networked virtual environments. In Conf. Rec. IEEE ICC'03, pages 885--890, May 2003.
• 10: Y. Ishibashi , S. Tasaka, A synchronization mechanism for continuous media in multimedia communications, Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communication Societies (Vol. 3)-Volume, p.1010, April 02-06, 1995
• 11: QEDSoft Home Page. http://www.qedsoft.com/.
• 12: Jose Alvear, Web Developer.Com Guide to Streaming Multimedia, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1998
• 13: Tom Molet , Ronan Boulic , Daniel Thalmann, A real time anatomical converter for human motion capture, Proceedings of the Eurographics workshop on Computer animation and simulation '96, p.79-94, December 1996, Poitiers, France
• 14: NIST Net home page. http://snad.ncsl.nist.gov/itg/nistnet/.
• 15: S. Tasaka, T. Nunome, and Y. Ishibashi. Live media synchronization quality of a retransmission-based error recovery scheme. In Conf. Rec. IEEE ICC'00, pages 1535--1541, June 2000.
• 16: Y. Ishibashi, S. Tasaka, and H. Ogawa. Media synchronization quality of reactive control schemes. IEICE Trans. Commun., E86-B(10):3103--3113, October 2003.
• 17: D. L. Mills. Internet time synchronization: The network protocol. IEEE Trans. Commun., 39(10):1482--1493, October 1991.