Not so long ago multimedia seemed like a brand new research field and an emerging new industry but, today, it can truly be said to have come of age. The Encyclopedia of Multimedia, second edition, has, as its aim, an in‐depth coverage of the important concepts, issues, and technology trends in the field of multimedia technologies, systems, techniques, and applications.
The work is slightly over 1,000 pages in length and is well illustrated with 565 figures and 51 tables. There is no major Introduction, merely a fairly brief Preface from Editor‐in‐Chief, Borko Furht, which is more in the nature of acknowledgements and thanks to the Editorial Board and publishers. The Encyclopedia is simply an A to Z list of entries and a substantial index.
This is definitely not a work for the beginner in multimedia, and this can be appreciated from the first entry under the letter A on Active Buffer Management for Provision of VCR Functionalities which covers adjusting the contents of the buffer after execution of VCR functions in VoD Systems. This entry, which includes several illustrations, is of a highly technical nature. For example, the first figure shows the basic operational principle of ABM in a staggered VoD system with no VCR actions. It goes on to explain that, assuming the buffer can hold three segments, then at some point the buffer downloads segments z, z+1, z+2 and the play point is in segment z+1. If there is no VCR action, then after a period of time the play point will be at the start of segment z+2. At this moment, in order to keep the play point in the middle, the client will download segment z+3 and segment z will be discarded. The entry, as with all entries in the work, concludes with cross‐references, and references.
The entry on JPEG explains that JPEG has become the most widely used format for storing digital photographs since it was first published in 1994. It lists the original JPEG specification which defines the four compression modes namely sequential (baseline); hierarchical; progressive; and lossless. The section goes on to explain the main stages of the JPEG encoder complete with a detailed diagram of JPEG encoder and decoder as a block diagram followed by a table covering JPEG quantization. The JPEG 2000 image coding standard is covered in considerably more detail and includes the relevant equations connected with quantization.
Multimedia is a vast area and, doubtless another, such encyclopedia could well come up with many areas which are not covered in this work and, likewise, this Encyclopedia covers many areas in depth which may not be covered by similar works. Examples of what might be considered mainstream multimedia areas which are covered are Audio Compression and Coding Techniques; Audio Conferencing; Audio Streaming Camera Motions; Client‐Server Multimedia Streaming; Colour Image Noise; Digital Cinema; Digital Rights Management (DRM); Digital Watermarking; Geographic Video Content; High Definition Live Streaming; Huffman Coding; Human‐Computer Interaction (to us “old hands” the HCI will always be remembered as the non‐PC Man‐Machine Interface!); In Home, In Car, In Flight Entertainment; IP Telephony; LCD Display Interfaces; the various MPEG compressions; Multimedia Authoring, Conferencing, Design and Web Information Systems; Online Gaming; Video Conferencing; Virtual Reality; and others. Some of the less common areas covered are Face Recognition including Expression Recognition Using Three Dimensional Data; as well as Face Recognition Tracking and Recognition for Broadcast Video.
There are some entries that seem a little strange, one of these being almost a page on Fairness in Online Games which explains that, due to the best‐effort nature of the Internet, players can experience erratic game progression which can often prevent them from appropriately responding to the stimuli generated during the game session and that this leads to frustrating gaming experiences. The problem is in ensuring that players perceive the game evolution in the same moment, despite different network latencies and that fairness schemes avoid imbalanced games sessions when no mechanisms for mitigating the QoS differences are exploited within the online games system.
Regrettably this work suffers from poor translation in some entries. When I first noticed this, I assumed it to be an isolated instance, but I have found a number of such instances where an entry is poorly worded in what must simply be poor translation – not very helpful in an extremely technical book. This is unfortunate when one notes from the preface that the Editorial Board consists of some 40 members.
This is a heavy (including its weight at 2.97 kg) technical work which would have been much improved by closer attention to editing of the grammar. It is also noted that there are some entries in this book with unexplained acronyms, and there is no acronym list included. However, the Encyclopedia is well produced, as one has come to accept from the renowned Springer imprint, and it is nicely laid out and there can be no faulting of the photographs or diagrams. The type font is a good size which is of benefit in a work requiring concentrated reading.
This work is recommended for graduate and post‐graduate students of multimedia for whom it will provide useful source and references, and for any organization specialising in the study or design of advanced multimedia devices. It would not be suitable for beginners or even more advanced practitioners of multimedia – it is a purely academic work and neither would it be suitable, for the most part, in public libraries or schools who would also be likely to find the cost prohibitive.
