Timeline Based Authoring

In a Timeline Based Authoring system, objects are placed along a timeline. The timeline can be drawn on the screen in a window in a graphic manner, or it is created using a script in a manner similar to a project plan. But the user must specify resource object and position it in the timeline. On playback the object starts playing at that point in the time scale. In most timeline based approaches, once the multimedia object has been captured in a timeline, it is fixed in location and cannot be manipulated easily. So, a single timeline causes loss of information about the relative time lines for each individual object. Editing a component causes all objects in the time line to be reassigned because the positions of objects are fixed in time, only in sequence. Copying portions of timeline becomes difficult because it is difficult to predict the start of new section. This limitation of using timeline approach can be overcome by defining time relations directly between objects.