Computers are commonly used to present a variety of digital media, including images, audio samples (sounds), and video media, as well as text and geometric shapes. Each of these media types can be presented individually, or a number of such media elements can be presented together in what is known as a composite multimedia presentation.
The ability to create and distribute composite multimedia presentations is very important for the dissemination of information based on various media types. In addition, standardized means of representing composite multimedia presentations have been created to enable many authors to create presentations that can be reproduced on a variety of computer platforms, such as personal computers, set-top boxes, and other devices.
Two well-known standardized formats of composite multimedia presentation developed by the Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) are an Extensible MPEG-4 Textual (XMT) format and a binary coded MPEG-4 (mp4) format. The XMT format is well suited for authoring composite multimedia presentations, while the mp4 format is well suited for compact storage and transmission of composite multimedia presentations. Thus, it is desirable to efficiently convert XMT-formatted presentation to an mp4-formatted presentation.