The way humankind has recorded its knowledge has changed dramatically. Today, incredibly small devices can store hundreds of books or pictures, hours of speech, music or video. Digital information has reached all types of expression and, above all, it acquired important properties: portability, mobility and ubiquity. Despite this promising scenario, some obstacles have made its concretization a difficult task.
The myriad of formats and technologies used to encode information not always allows a real convergence. To face this problem, the MPEG specified a technology that allows the composition and delivery of interactive multimedia content at variable bit rates over high and low bandwidth connections -- the MPEG-4 standard. In other words, a technology that aggregates all types of information in a rich-content format which can be delivered everywhere.
Audiovisual content is created at an increasingly fast pace. These sources of information also have an increasing need for processi