An analysis of multimedia formats for content description

Among some of the most popular multimedia formats available today are: QuickTime, Shockwave, Advanced Streaming Format, RealVideo and MPEG-4. Since broadband Internet became widely available, these multimedia formats have strongly evolved and are extremely popular. This article analyzes these formats based on an existing reference model. This reference model is built on the state-of-the-art in three areas: temporal models, computer based descriptions and synchronization mechanisms. Out of these three areas a set of 10 criteria describing the reference model was created. In this paper we first shortly explain the reference model and it's ten criteria. Then each of the listed multimedia formats is mapped onto the reference model. Finally, a comparison based on the reference model is given. In the conclusions section we point out some of the strong and some of the weak points for the different multimedia formats based on the comparison.