The editing interface will allow the user to make copies of a whole media stream or to select a segment of a media stream in order to create their own personal archives. When editing, the user will be able to create a text description of arbitrary parts of the media to aid playback selection. Further editing tools can be used to combine pre-selected segments of media, from possibly different conferences, into new presentation material. The new presentations could then be used as lecture material, for summaries of work, or for presentations of project work. As these newly created presentations will be independent of one another it allows multiple uses of one recording and thus allow a more flexible use of the whole archive.
A full playback of a video conference can be time consuming and often not what is required. It is envisaged that a set of media editors be designed to enable each media to be made presentable for different uses. This will allow for:
The editing functions required are the addition of annotations, the selection of segments, and the ability to do post-processing of the data.
The addition of annotations allows users to add meta-data to a
recording. These annotations can take on many forms, such as text, to
interface to browsing and selection tools; HTML data or URLs, to interface
with the World Wide Web; content classification data, to interface to
search engines; start of video frame or start of speech burst markers, to
interface to special player; and so on. The addition of text descriptions
allows users to specify what is contained in different sections of a
recording. These descriptions can be presented via the playback tool, and
allow the user to play from a specified point. Figure 9.4 show a stream
with three added text annotations.
The editing process allows segments of a recording to be selected and
saved for later use. These segments are independent of the original
recording and can be manipulated freely for other uses. Some related
techniques to the one suggested here are described by Hampapur in [#!hampa!#].
Figure 9.5 shows that some segments that have been selected from the
original media stream. One selection has three small segments, whilst the
other has one larger segment. This results in three instances of media
for the one recording; the original media, the 3 small segments, and the
larger segment. Each can be used independently of the others.
For each type of media, and for each different format for that media, a different segment selection editor may be required. For example:
When using stream synchronisation, the segments of the media should be synchronised such that when one media segment is selected an equivalent part of some associate media is also selected. Figure 9.6 shows that the user is able to select segments (shown in grey) of video and audio which are equivalent with respect to the synchronisation information stored by the server.
Next: Analysis and Post-Processing Tools
Up: Server Interfaces
Previous: Playback
Jon CROWCROFT
1998-12-03