New web tool to improve multimedia surfing

[a at e8z.org]

New web tool to improve multimedia surfing

Browser makes online audio and video searchable and linkable. 
26 June 2003 

John Whitfield 


The new browser works with all file formats.
© CSIRO
 

A new web tool makes online video and audio as interactive as text, say its creators. The software could enhance surfing, and help individuals and organizations manage large quantities of footage.

"Within five years it'll be on everybody's desktop," predicts Silvia Pfeiffer of CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences in Sydney, Australia. Her team is releasing the code as open source for others to use and modify. 

The new software, called Annodex, allows any section within a file to be given a descriptive tag - 'love scene', 'fight' or 'interview', for example. Tags form a stream of information that runs alongside the file, changing to keep track of it.

These descriptions could enable search engines to find audio or video directly; at the moment they can detect only web pages that carry such files. The tags also allow surfers to move around within packages of sound and images while playing them, in the same way that we can go to a different part of the same web page via links. 

Surfers can hop either by naming a section, or a time. They can also follow links into or out of the file, which change to reflect what's playing at that moment. For example, during an animated flight through a galaxy, links to external pages on black holes can become active during the journey past the hole at the galactic centre.

"It's a huge step," comments Phillip Jenkins of PIVoD, a digital media company based in Perth, Australia, that has begun using the software. "It'll enhance the use of video and audio phenomenally."

Annodex allows users to divide files to into chunks - scenes of a film, for example - label them, and add links to each chunk. Sections, labels and links must currently be made by hand. The CSIRO team is working on ways to automate the process, such as with speech-recognition software. 

Pfeiffer's team aims to release a Web browser program to run Annodex for the Macintosh within a few weeks. They hope to have a version for Linux and Windows by the end of the year. Similar tools are becoming available for online animations and diagrams.

The browser displays the sub-sections' titles, and has a button that becomes active when a section is linked. It works with all file formats.

"There'll be massive applications in media and government," says Jenkins. He envisages TV companies and parliaments using Annodex to organize their archives, or security companies classifying CCTV footage.

Pfeiffer also sees domestic applications. "I've got a huge collection of home videos, that I can't do much with," she says. "With this, I could put all the data on a web server, annotate it, and send a link to my mother in Germany."

http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/030623/030623-11.html