A practical method for the synchronization of life continuous media streams

One of the major problems in networked multimedia is the playout synchronization of continuous media streams. The sink of a set of transmitted media streams has to reestablish the presentation timing of samples within each stream (intra-stream synchronization) and among streams (inter-stream synchronization). In applications that include live human-to-human conversation there is the additional requirement that the delay between acquisition and presentation of media data be kept low. This article presents a method that allows to synchronize an arbitrary combination of live continuous media streams and at the same time maintain a minimal end-to-end delay. Emphasis is given to the description of an implementation of this method.