Speaker:

Leon Shiman

Title for the presentation:

MAS: Resolving the need for a media standard for open-source.

Abstract

The goal of this presentation is to provide developers and planners a detailed review of the new open-source MAS Technology for Media and Accessibility Applications for Linux and Unix. MAS is scheduled for public release by X.Org with X11R6.7 on March 1.

We will discuss the characteristic MAS architectural feature of distributed, time-managed, mediadata flow. The structure and use of the MASAPI in application development will be covered as well as use of the Device Programmers Interface (DPI), for adding new media-format-specific data processing modules. The important differences between MAS and other media control architectures will be considered.

Technical overview will include:

• the MAS Core
• MAS as a local process
• MAS as a distributed application
• the MAS libraries
• the concept of a MAS Device
• the two classes of MAS Devices
• portability
• the MAS coding standards
• error handling in the MAS core and in applications
• inclusion of proprietary codecs
• streaming and multi-cast
• real and perceptual time

An important purpose of the technical review will be to enable broad-based open development of the current core code.

We believe it is also important to fully discuss the process of creation, acceptance, and implementation of a common open-source standard for pluri-modal media, and its adoption by developers of traditional multi-media and education-directed applications. Requirements for such a standard will be described and discussed. Discussion will consider how best to work with the practical constraints on the use and distribution of proprietary components. Finally, we will review the mechanisms necessary for maintaining stable, certified, evolving, standard code without forking.

Homepage: http://www.shiman.com/
http://www.MediaApplicationServer.net/; Please review linked documents.

Required knowledge

A basic understanding of UNIX/*BSD/Linux and the X Window System.

About the speaker

PhD, MIT. Formerly at MIT, the Freie Universitaet Berlin, and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, as Director of Computing. Board of Directors, Utility Industry Group, and X.Org. Founder of Shiman Associates Inc (SAI), group consultancy for IT, software architecture and development. Specialists in cross-platform applications for Unix and Linux; Developers of "X"-licensed Media Application ServerTM, MASTM for X.Org, and a Web-based data and document manager The Alexandrian AuthorityTM. Committed to strong, stable, standards-based, open-source software

Online webcast:

Can be found at http://linuxforum.mmmanager.net