XMovie: architecture and implementation of a distributed movie system

We describe a system for storing, transmitting, and presenting digital movies in a computer network. The hardware used in the system is standard hardware, as found in typical workstations today; no special hardware is required, but if available it can be used to provide better performance. The XMovie system has several innovative features. First, it contains a new algorithm for the gradual adaptation of the color lookup table during the presentation of the movie to ensure optimal color quality on low-end workstations. Second, it is a multistandard system supporting the compression techniques MPEG, Motion JPEG, and a newly developed extension to the well-known Color Cell Compression method. Third, it contains AdFEC, a new adaptable forward error correction method for our movie transmission protocol.