What is User Modelling

The previous decade has witnessed a wealth of advancements and trends in the field of communications and subsequently, multimedia access. Four main developments from the last few years have opened up the prospect for ubiquitous multimedia consumption: wireless communications and mobility, standardised multimedia content, interactive versus passive consumption and the Internet and the World Wide Web. While individual and isolated developments have produced modest boosts to this existing state of affairs, their combination and cross-fertilisation have resulted in today’s complex but exciting landscape. In particular, we are beginning to see delivery of all types of data for all types of users in all types of conditions (Pereira & Burnett, 2003). Compression, transport, and multimedia description are examples of individual technologies that are improving all the time. However, the lack of interoperable solutions across these spaces is holding back the deployment of advanced multimedia packaging and distribution applications. To enable transparent access to multimedia content, it is essential to have available not only the description of the content but also a description of its format and of the usage environment in order that content adaptation may be performed to provide the end-user with the best content experience for the content requested with the conditions available (Vetro, 2003). In the following sections, we will look at the background of multimedia content adaptation, why do we require it and why are present solutions not adequate. We then go onto the main focus of the article, which describes the main themes of modern multimedia content adaptation, such as present day work that defines the area and overviews and descriptions of techniques used. We then look at what this research will lead to in the future and what we can expect in years to come. Finally, we conclude this article by reviewing what has been discussed.