What is OPERA ?
OPERA - An Open Platform for Multimedia Resource Exchange is a next-generation platform for multimedia content delivery over the Internet.

Today many Internet web sites already contain a fair amount of multimedia content like audio and video, the way these contents are managed and retrieved poses challenges not only to end users, but also the Internet Service Providers. Specifically, they have to deal with: various media formats such as Real, QuickTime, Windows Media, MPEG, AVI, etc. various encoding rates such as 28.8kbps, 56kbps, ISDN, T1, etc. Consequently, it is often necessary to provide multiple links for just a single video clip. This unintuitive interface could easily confuse most users and selecting the correct link could be a challenge to the ordinary. Worst, if one happens to select an incorrect link, various errors and problems could result.

In OPERA project, we aimed to develop tools for the content provider and the Internet Services Provider so that there will be a single, unified link for a multimedia object. Users will no longer need to know their connections and their installed software options before clicking. Our system will select the best choice for them, transparently and automatically.

System Architecture
* Universal Multimedia Resource Locator (UMRL) is a multimedia-format independent address for the world-wide-web. For each UMRL, it represents a group of multimedia files with different encoding format, coded bit-rate or even language.
* Multimedia Name System (MNS) is used to redirect the users to the multimedia server according to the preferences to the user and other factors such as Encoding Format Coded Bit-rate, Language, Location of the Multimedia Server, Loading of the Multimedia Server
* Content Management System (CMS) is introduced to simplify the management process of the Content Providers and Internet Service Providers. Some of the benefits and include Automatic Scheduled File Uploading Automatic Multimedia Replication Our Content Partner.