Olfaction-enhanced multimedia synchronization

This chapter introduces olfaction-enhanced multimedia synchronization and focuses on two key aspects: the specification of olfaction-enhanced multimedia, including the temporal relations between the media components; and secondly, the implementation of synchronized delivery of olfaction-enhanced multimedia. The relevance of this topic is supported by the fact that recently, multimedia researchers have begun to work with several new media components such as olfaction, haptic and gustation. The characteristics of these multisensory media differ significantly from traditional media. Multisensory media components cannot be classified as being continuous or discrete. Olfaction, the sense of smell, in particular, raises numerous research challenges. Synchronization, perceptual variability, sensor and display development are just some of the avenues among many others that require efforts from the research community. In terms of synchronization, implementing synchronized delivery as part of transmission across constrained networks is not the key research challenge (although adaptive mulsemedia delivery can play an important role here). Rather the principal problem, from a synchronization perspective, is understanding the experiential attributes of olfaction with respect to the temporal relations with other media components and the effect of these on the user's perceived Quality of Experience (QoE). This task is non-trivial. There are many facets unique to olfaction, which need to be understood in order to design and execute even the most basic of evaluations. In this chapter, we present and discuss the results of a subjective study which considered the above-mentioned "specification" and "implementation" challenges. In particular, we focus on analysing the user's ability to detect synchronization error and the resultant annoyance levels of synchronization error.