M-Studio : an authoring tool for context-aware mobile storytelling

Abstract

The pervasiveness of high-speed wireless networks and handheld computers provide a channel for context-aware video delivery. Mobile cinema is a new form of motion picture experience in which discrete cinematic events are delivered based on a consumer's navigation through space and time, via this new channel. M-Studio is an authoring tool that helps mobile story creators design and simulate location-based narratives. The tool provides the author with a graphical interface for linking content with a specific geographical space, a framework for developing story structures for multi-threaded narratives, and a simulator that allows the author to evaluate the story threads that might unfold depending on the path taken by the viewer. The tool also directly generates the XML code that is used by a story server to deliver cinematic sequences to handheld devices. M-Studio has been used in the creation of two mobile narratives.