The main goal of the computing industry today is information management. Sometimes information is presented in multimedia form - that means with video and sound media mixed with conventional text and numbers. The Stony Brook Video Server project is a distributed video server application that provides indexing, searching and video streaming in a convenient way to clients over the network.
This paper describes the architecture and implementation of a distributed video server. The architecture represents a scalable solution, designed to efficiently use network resources while serving a growing number of clients. Another specific feature of the application is the handling of text information obtained from closed captions. While playing, the video is accompanied by synchronized text. The text of the movie is searchable by expressions, providing an easy way to access the desired information.
Special attention is paid to the data integrity and fault tolerance.