Client-Server Metadata Management for the Delivery of Movies in a Video-On-Demand System

The Internet is experiencing an explosion in the number of connected users. Beyond simple mechanisms of FTP and electronic mail, distributed information services provided by WAIS, Gopher, Archie, WWW, etc. are rapidly changing the operating view of the Internet. This change is further expedited by the falling costs associated with terminal equipment that can handle continuous media such as audio and video. The support of bandwidth-intensive and storage-intensive media in a distributed environment requires rethinking both the raw data transmission infrastructure as well as information dissemination mechanisms. In this paper we describe a mechanism for location, identification, and delivery of continuous media in the form of digital motion pictures in the context of a distributed system. The metadata mechanism and supporting protocols are based on the client-server model. The mechanism can be applied to numerous application domains including multimediabased home entertainment, catalog shopping, distance learning, and distributed-interactive classrooms. We demonstrate the practicality of our the mechanisms though a prototype application based on home entertainment.