Most of the existing research work in the area of media adaptation is concentrated on content adaptation, transcoding and delivery mechanisms without addressing the actual input and output of multimedia data. However, it is the I/O stage of media processing that humans are concerned about. Up until now, most multimedia applications have relied on standalone I/O devices (microphone, headphones, monitor, camera) to capture or render multimedia data. This situation is about to change. Nowadays we are surrounded by a vast number of audio/video (AV) sensors and actuators. They are built into our cellular phones, PDAs, tablets, laptops, and surveillance systems. A natural idea that comes out of this fact is to combine multiple I/O devices into a distributed array of sensors and actuators. The paper shows the feasibility of this idea and shifts media adaptation research away from a single device/stream paradigm towards array multimedia processing. We demonstrate how to transform a network of off-the-shelf devices into a distributed I/O array by providing common time (with tens of microseconds precision) and 3D space coordinates (with a few centimetres precision). We also discuss the implications and potentials of self-calibrating distributed AV-sensor/actuator networks for improved media adaptation.
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