7. Summary and Discussions

In this chapter we have presented many important aspects of distributed video management, computing, and delivery systems in a peer-to-peer setting, beyond the existing infrastructure. We, however, believe the issues discussed here, and some of the solutions presented, are just a beginning, rather than a conclusion, of related topics. Many interesting questions are not yet answered or have been extensively studied.

Nonetheless, this is a start. We have introduced novel schemes for multi-rate differential encoding, distributed video coding, and distributed adaptive storage and cache management, for data storage and management. We have also discussion distributed search mechanisms. For content delivery over distributed networks, we have presented new formulations and schemes for optimal dynamic transcoding as well as robust unicast and multicast over wireless LANs. In addition, we have introduced the concept of perceived quality monitoring via embedded watermarks to assess or validate the content delivery results. And more importantly, we have generalized the various components and designed an architecture on top of standard peer-to-peer service layer, and built a prototype system MAPS to illustrate the concepts. The technology components and the integrated system architecture are aimed to enable an array of emerging applications in distributed video management and delivery.