Template-based generation of multimedia presentations

Data-centered approaches to multimedia presentation design and implementation can be developed by extending methodologies and technologies common in text-based applications. A multimedia report is a multimedia presentation built on a set of data returned by one or more queries to multimedia repositories, integrated according to a template with appropriate spatial layout and temporal synchronization, and coherently delivered to a user for browsing. We discuss the problem of defining templates for such multimedia reports with a focus on media coordination and synchronization. Multimedia presentations can be automatically generated according to the template by instantiating it on actual data instances. An XML language describes the spatial layout and the temporal constraints of the media objects. An authoring system and a player have been implemented.