Synchronization of MPEG2 Streams in a Video on Demand System

In a Video on Demand (VoD) application, video server performance can rapidly decrease as users' requests become more numerous because each one requires a client/server point-to-point connection and a consequent data flow. This call cause network and/or server I/O device bandwidth saturation. In order to reduce the number of data flows generated by users' requests, it i possible to adopt synchronization techniques for merging streams related to the sane multimedia document. This paper presents a technique to slow down or speed up MPEG2 coded video streams and its implementation by means of software components devoted to the synchronization process. Preliminary results about the efficiency of the synchronization process are also provided.