“…. and Action!”
Semantic technologies creating an EU market for video clips
(firmenpresse) - Sharing video clips and earning fairly from their further exploitation is now possible with the help of the intelligent use of semantic technologies. This has been shown by a Europe-wide project coordinated by MODUL University Vienna. The project has succeeded in uniting representatives of the European media industry with a view to jointly use, refine and establish semantic technologies. The now finished project has demonstrated the possibilities of a market based on Semantic Web technologies, primarily by making concrete examples of successful implementations. In addition to an e-learning video Website, the technology has also been integrated into the dashboard of webLyzard, a leading European web intelligence platform.
Digital content such as photos, song tracks and videos are big-business. But the utilization possibilities have by no means been fully exploited, particularly in the video sector. Unlike photos and songs, for videos even short clips can be helpful and valuable. Creatively spliced or embedded in new content, they can reduce the need for expensive new productions and provide holders of exploitation rights with a fresh source of income. But what sounds so attractive and lucrative in theory fails in practice: reasons are a lack of implementation of innovative technologies by the industry, non-uniform standards and unresolved issues concerning the management of rights. MODUL University Vienna, acting as the coordinator of an international project, has tackled this problem and has done an impressive job in showing the way forward for the common EU market.
Added value with MediaMixer
In fact, the team at the university’s Institute for New Media Technology has united numerous key players in the European media industry within the MediaMixer project. In addition to producers of digital videos, they also include suppliers and traders. As Dr. Lyndon Nixon, project coordinator and researcher at the Institute for New Media Technology, commented on this community-building exercise: “Winning a critical mass of players in the European media industry was extremely important. In doing so, we created a platform for constructive exchange within the sector with the help of forums, webinars and sector meetings that will remain in place after the project has ended. Only in this way will the necessary technologies be able to gain a foothold in the heterogeneous European market.”
The essential technologies served to fragment and annotate video sequences. These technologies are instrumental in making the content of individual video sequences available to search engines and software agents, thereby creating the most important prerequisite for added value in the digital marketplace.
The team showed how it works with the help of the e-learning provider VideoLectures.NET. Over 15,000 teaching videos from universities and conferences were made available. Most are one to one and a half hour in length and are lavishly accompanied by slides and text. The problem is to discover those sequences that are personally relevant to the searcher. To overcome this obstacle, technologies were used that automatically identify language, faces and even contextual concepts, thereby defining the video fragments. Leading semantic technologies were then used to annotate the fragments, thus enabling people to search for content by key words.
In cooperation with the Austrian technology startup webLyzard technology, these possibilities have now been implemented in YouTube videos. Professor Arno Scharl, head of the Institute for New Media Technology and CEO of webLyzard technology explains: “Innovative semantic technologies are being used to detect similarities between search terms and annotations. Users receive relevant search results even if the search terms do not correspond exactly to the annotations. In the future, the ability to process multimedia content precisely and in realtime will play a key role in our web intelligence platform.”
To this end, the team created prototypes of their own search function that detects short sequences in YouTube videos and lists them as search results in a structured format. (If desired, it can also visually display an overview of the core content of the clips.) So instead of tediously trawling through entire videos, the user can now access the most relevant video sequences in a fraction of a second.
Satisfying all concerned
“But MediaMixer was not only a technical development project,” explains Dr. Nixon. “We approached the future use of videos on a much broader front. In addition to the actual technologies, processes for managing such fragments were also developed in the project. And – most critically – the management of copyrights on video sequences was also conceptionalized.”
It is precisely this comprehensive approach that has generated strong interest in MediaMixer within the European media industry. MediaMixer has been accepted as the pioneering platform that brings together key players, innovative technologies and successful examples, thereby ushering in the future of an expanded market for digital videos in the EU.
MediaMixer in 69 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McAlxWtXabE
Further information
EU research project MediaMixer: www.mediamixer.eu
MediaMixer Community platform: http://community.mediamixer.eu
Institute for New Media Technology: www.modul.ac.at/nmt
webLyzard dashboard integration: www.weblyzard.com/video
About MediaMixer
The project was sponsored within the 7th EU Framework Program under number FP7-318101. The MediaMixer partners were: MODUL University Vienna, Austria; Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - CERTH, Greece; Condat AG, Germany; EURECOM, France; Lleida University, Spain; Acuity Unlimited, Great Britain; and Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia.
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About MODUL University Vienna (last updated: May 2014)
MODUL University Vienna, the international private university of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, offers undergraduate and graduate education (BBA, BSc, MSc, MBA and PhD programs) in the fields of international business and management, new media technology, public governance, and sustainable development, as well as tourism and hospitality management. The study programs meet strict accreditation guidelines and, due to their international focus, are conducted in English. The university campus is located at Kahlenberg, in Vienna’s 19th district. The research program of the Institute for New Media Technology focuses on the impact of online media and social network platforms on stakeholder communication and public opinion-formation processes, and on how such processes can be recorded, analyzed and visualized using semantic technologies.
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Dr. Lyndon Nixon
MODUL University Vienna
Institute for New Media Technology
Am Kahlenberg 1
1190 Vienna, Austria
T +43 / 1 / 320 3555 - 520
E lyndon.nixon(at)modul.ac.at
W http://www.modul.ac.at/
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Datum: 26.05.2014 - 08:21 Uhr
Sprache: Deutsch
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