Multimedia Big Data Computing

With the proliferation of social media, which is largely fostered by the boom of the Internet and mobile ecosystems, a huge amount of multimedia data has been generated, forming the multimedia big data. However, because multimedia data is unstructured and multimodal in nature, with real-time and Quality of Experience requirements, multimedia big data computing has not only created unprecedented opportunities but also imposed fundamental challenges in storage, processing, and analysis. Here, the authors introduce the principal concepts for multimedia big data computing, discuss what the scientific problems and fundamental challenges are, and present methodologies and approaches from the perspectives of the multimedia life cycle and multimedia big data computing life cycle. They also speculate on the research opportunities and directions for multimedia big data computing. © 1994-2012 IEEE.