The need to support multimedia in Open Distributed Processing (ODP) environments is a major challenge when setting up distributed network systems. This book has been written specifically to address the problems of supporting multimedia applications, such as desktop conferencing, multimedia email, video-on-demand systems and virtual reality environments, in ODP standards and platforms. This book provides: an introduction to the field of ODP, with detailed descriptions of ISO's RM-ODP, OMG's CORBA and Open Group's DC a description of the requirements of distributed multimedia applications (in terms of support for continuous media, quality of service, real-time synchronization and multiparty communications an evaluation of these ODP platforms with respect to their support for multimedi a detailed description of an architecture for ODP standards and platforms supporting multimedi a description of two proof-of-concept demonstrators focusing on the programming model and on engineering support For information on Middleware '98 , IFIP International Conference on Distributed Systems Platforms and Open Distributed Processing, 15-18 September 1998, link to: