Multimedia object prefetching and sharing to support the presentations of continuous and synchronous media streams in distributed environments has not been fully studied. We have formulated the principles of minimum retrieval and consuming start times of media objects at both server and client sides, while guaranteeing the continuity and synchrony of the presentation of media objects. We have also identified the time positions at which objects attain maximum buffer requirements and discussed buffer sharing among media streams.

Based on the profiles of each media stream in each time interval, a full analysis of buffer sharing was conducted to find the maximum buffer requirement applicable to all the objects presented in the interval. The preliminary experiments demonstrated that buffer sharing reduced the buffer requirement by 20% to 50%.

The following figure demonstrates two cases of buffer sizes with or without buffer sharing.