A real-time multimedia communication system over broadband networks is introduced in the paper. This system consists of distributed database servers which store and retrieve data objects of different types of media and in different coding formats. The multimedia document is transmitted over the network as streams through different connections and presented to the user simultaneously. A set of stream synchronization control schemes is designed to control the multiple data streams (either in coded or uncoded format) to achieve multimedia synchronization during progressive presentation. centralized scheduler derives a stream delivery schedule to compensate variable network delay. synchronization controller at a user's workstation performs synchronization error recovery by adjusting the presentation schedule according to the temporal requirements in the scenario. Skew tolerance parameters are employed as one of the synchronization requirements. In particular, MPEG-2 coded stream synchronization control is investigated.