Visualizing video archive content -- arte.tv

Okay, first at all, it's been a while that I have written a blog post here. I guess that's some tribute to the ever faster spinning world of digital media as I had concentrated more on shorter and therefore, faster means of communication such as twitter and (shame on me...) facebook. Nevertheless, while skipping through the pages of moresemantic I decided to revive the blog and to keep on posting about current research work....

This morning, I had to look up a documentary 'The Digital Bomb', which had been broadcasted yesterday evening on the German/French arte television channel. Arte is one of the public service television channels focussing on culture and arts. As many other television broadcasters, arte of course maintains a website and being as a television broadcaster there is also some sort of media archive. As being a public service television broadcaster, some strange regulations keep the archive from maintaining more than 7 days of tv-program -- but this is something completely different (as to speak with Monty Python). This morning, I made some discoveries in arte's tv archive, esp. about their way of visualizing content.

Besides being a little bit difficult to find the right mode of access -- esp. if you are looking for a specific date of broadcast, I succeeded in finding this nice portal page showing the most featured videos of yesterday's tv program including a timeline (at the top) for growing back (and forth) in time. I really like the 2-D tile pattern relating the size of the videos (represented by some significant key frame) to their popularity (or any other ranking). When you place the mouse pointer over a frame you will get more detailed information about the video and by clicking on it the video opens for reviewing.

All in all it seems to be inspired by the TED video archive and there's still room for improvement. I would like to see also timelines for shown content (not only broadcast or production date) as well as geographical information about production/content shown in interactive maps.

Now I have become curious about what else is out there? Any new innovative, interactive visualizations for displaying video archive content aside from the youtube mainstream??

Artifacts of modern information society

Artifact, i.e. an error or misrepresentation introduced by a technique and/or technology. Most obvious are artifacts in lossy image compression techniques such as, e.g. the jpeg compression algorithm. For jpeg, the entire image is divided into 8x8 pixel squares (of course for all three color channels... but not RGB. For jpeg the RGB picture is first transposed into the YCrCb color space, i.e. Y for luminance and Cr, Cb for chrominance being subdivided into red and blue. BTW, there is also subsampling, i.e. luminance is sampled with higher accuracy than chrominance w.r.t the human sensory perceiption). Then these 8x8 squares of intensity values are transformed into the frequency domain via a discrete cosine transformation. Up to now, no artefacts, no data loss.....

But, next comes a quantification algorithm that rounds the frequency values within the 8x8 squares. If this is done with high accuracy, often one doesn't even notice it within the picture. But, increasing quantification also results in higher data compression, which also results in more data loss, which creates ... artifacts. You can see the typical jpeg raster effect, whenever using high jpeg compression.Here's a cool animation of an image being jpeg compressed 600 times (in a 20 second short movie). The simple algorithm goes:

Open the last saved jpeg image
Save it as a new jpeg image with slightly more compression
Repeat 600 times.

Generation Loss from hadto on Vimeo.

HPI Vorlesungen auf iTunesU

Seit gestern (Montag, 13.1.2009) bieten neben dem Hasso-Plattner-Institut der Universität Potsdam auch die Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, die RWTH Aachen und die LMU München Vorlesungsaufzeichnungen und Lehrangebote via iTunesU als Video/Audio-Podcasts an. Das Ganze startete mit gehörigem Presse-Rummel (siehe Links) und ich bin schon einmal auf die Nutzungszahlen gespannt, über die ich hier natürlich wieder berichten werde....

Natürlich ist das Thema Vorlesungsaufzeichnungen und deren Distribution via Podcasts nichts Neues. Bislang war der "exklusive" Distributionsweg über Apple iTunes' separate "Bildungs-Channels" nur englischsprachigen -- also vorwiegend US-amerikanischen -- Universitäten vorbehalten. Nichtsdestotrotz findet man aber auch im regulären iTunes Angebot den ein oder anderen Bildungshappen, vielleicht auch von einer nicht ganz so exklusiven Universität.

Und wenn man nicht unbedingt zum proprietären "Marktführer" Apple gehen möchte gibt es da natürlich auch noch das universelle akademische Videoportal yovisto mit seinem unschlagbaren Vorlesungsangebot von mehr als 6000 Vorlesungen und wissenschaftlichen Vorträgen, das zudem auch noch inhaltlich durchsucht werden kann...

Links:

• Videobeitrag: Lehrmaterialien und Vorlesungen von Elite-Unis im Internet als Podcast verfügbar (Max Ruppert, RBB, tagesschau 13:00 Uhr, 13.01.2009)


• Vorlesung zum Mitnehmen. Apple steigt ins E-Learning-Geschäft ein. (auch als mp3 verfügbar, Claudia van Laak, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 13.1.2009)


• HPI auf iTunesU

Classical Mechanics made popular by Walter Lewin

As you might know, my lectures are recorded and archived ever since 2004. I really do know, how difficult it is, to fit the lecture into the exact 90 minutes frame, to develop a dramaturgy to get the student's attention. But, looking at MIT Prof. Walter Lewin's lectures on Classical Mechanics (MIT 8.01) you really can become frustrated -- well at least as being a lecturer myself. From the listener's perspective, Walter Lewin's lectures are really great! Each single lecture follows an escalating dramaturgy leading into some astonishing experiment - often with Prof. Lewin being part of the experiment himself.

Let it be a life threatening pendulum experiment (here you can jump directely to the experiment in the video), or his funny safari costume for 'shooting the monkey'. The videos are profesisonally produced - no wonder, MIT invested 100.000 $ per lecture series. Each hour of Lewin's lectures requires 40 hours of preparation -- at least if you want to keep his quality standard.

Of course, simply by watching lectures at youtube or yovisto you don't learn. This fact holds since the times of Sokrates. You need practical experience under the guidance of a teacher. But hey, it's also pure fun to listen to Prof. Lewin and there's a lot to learn, esp. for teachers....

Yovisto has indexed the entire 35 lectures of 8.01 Classical Mechanics. By registering at yovisto, you can place tags and comments to every single point of time within Lewin's videos as well as you can bookmark only the highlights out of his lectures.

Internet lectures now also on itunes

This semester, all recordings of my lecture 'Rechnernetze und Internettechnologie' (Computer Networks and Internet Technology, the lecture is given in German) at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, are available via yovisto.com and also via itunes (for download). Here you will find the first lecture of the series at yovisto.com and here ist the itunes link to the lecture series.

Due to some deficiencies of the former real media recordings, we decided to encode all recordings via flash (in a much more fashionable style...see for yourself) now. The itunes version is of course mp4 with h.264 encoding.

Aus Osotis wird yovisto - Web 2.0 Video Suchmaschine

Gemäß dem Motto "aus Raider wird Twix" stellt sich die Videosuchmaschine yovisto (vormals "Osotis") auf der diesjährigen CeBIT 2008 im neuen Gewand vor. Was ist neu, außer dass es einen neuen Namen und ein neues Layout gibt? Einiges!

Mittlerweile sind gut 3000 Videos akademischer Lehrveranstaltungen in deutscher und englischer Sprache in yovisto verzeichnet und durchsuchbar. Im Gegensatz zu anderen Videosuchmaschinen bietet yovisto die Möglichkeit, in den Videos selbst nach Inhalten zu suchen, d.h. wenn man z.B. nach dem Suchbegriff "Buchdruck" sucht, bekommt man nicht nur Videos als Ergebnis, die sich primär mit dem Thema Buchdruck befassen, sondern man wird punktgenau an die betreffende Szene im Video geführt, ohne lange selbst im Video danach suchen zu müssen.

Neu ist vor allem das übersichtlichere, durchdachte Layout. Insbesondere die Informationsseiten zu den Videos, die sich von den Benutzern selbst in Form eines Wikis erstellen lassen, bieten vielfach Möglichkeiten, Zusatzinformationen, Zusammenfassungen und sogar themenbezogene Werbung mit einzustellen. Am Auffälligsten aber ist die Darstellung der VIdeoinformation als 'Cover Flow', wie wir es ja schon von Apple's iPhone oder vom Leopard Betriebssystem her kennen (siehe unten)



yovisto ist auf der CeBIT 2008 in Halle 9, Stand D04 vom 4. - 9. März in Hannover und natürlich jederzeit im Netz unter www.yovisto.com zu sehen. Wer uns auf der CeBIT am Stand besucht, bekommt exklusiv einen Original yovisto-Button (limitierte Auflage) geschenkt!

P.S. Beitrag mit yovisto im Thüringen Journal (via mdr.de), vom 4.März 2008, 19 Uhr

Everybody DOS now....

Words fail me....
Just take a look at this vintage MS-DOS advertisement video clip...

'everybody DOS now...'

Now with 384K extra available RAM....Really I remember those days, but it seems to be ages away. Thank god I have my Mac....

[via MissM@rple's Blog]

Turn your smile on....

Finally, the video clip is there! My friend schminktante as head of makeup department did the groovy 60s style make up in a music video being the diploma thesis of two students from bauhaus university in Weimar.
You may find some backstage information and also some pictures. Anyway....the setting reminds me somehow to the movie 'Catch me if you can'...
So...enjoy and 'turn your smile on'!

Tim Berners-Lee: The Semantic Web of Data

Tim Berners-Lee is talking about 'The Semantic Web of Data' in a video at Technology Review. In this short presentation the inventor of the world wide web is trying to explain in short, what the Semantic Web is all about, and how it will affect our way to look at data, to understand data, and to work with data (it's all about integration of heterogeneous data...).
('video found at Semantic Bits)

From iRack to iRan.....

I guess apple never thought (but maybe dreamed) of extending their iProduct line into domestic appliances or even sports ... :)


Link: sevenload.com

OSOTIS ...winning an iPod...and the CeBIT rumble starts again

I have already talked about the video search engine OSOTIS, but it has again improved over the time. First at all, what does 'OSOTIS' mean? No, it's not some sort of ancient egyptian god. It's just derived from the botanical name for 'forget-me-not', which is greek 'Myosotis'. So, the name already gives some hint for the offered service:
(1) OSOTIS offers search within videos
(2) right now, most videos available at OSOTIS are academic lecture recordings, ranging from short viseo sequences from the famous Solvay conference in 1927 (where Einstein replied to Bohr that God does not throw dice...) up to lectures from Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, or also my lectures at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena (Germany).
(3) OSOTIS does not host the videos (as youTube or Google does). They only provide links to your resources. Nevertheless, OSOTIS downloads the offered video stream for post processing and for generating timed annotations for the video serch.
(4) You can register at OSOTIS (btw if you register before April 15th you have the chance to win an iPod 30GB) and maintain your own video collections, maintain an own user profile, make friends, choose your favourite videos, and (!) you can tag videos.
(5) You can even tag inside video streams. This means that the tagging information also includes time information and that the search is able to replay the video exactly from the right position.
(6) OSOTIS is a social networking tool.
And OSOTIS is at the CeBIT computer fair that has just opened its gates. Visit us at hall 9, D04!
Yes...and tomorrow I will be at CeBIT in Hannover for the next three days. So just stay tuned, because I will write about everything interesting that comes into my way.

Internet Pioneers ... must see!

While doing some research on internet history for writing the 2nd edition of my WWW book, I found an impressive film that is gathering a lot of the most important internet pioneers. The documentary is entitled "Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing" and was produced back in 1972 (!!!) by Steven King from MIT. It features the ARPANET and many of the most important names in the history of computer networking.
You will see J.C.R. Licklider, former director of the IPTO at ARPA, who was the first to envision a global internet. Also Larry Roberts (also former director of IPTO), Robert Kahn (co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol and winner of the Turing Award), or Donald Davies (co-inventor of packet switching) are giving contributions.
It's really a 'must see', simply because all I already knew about internet history had come from books. I also only knew a few pictures showing early internet hardware or some mug-shots of the mentioned scientists. It's really interesting to see them in the film and to hear them talking about their great vision of internet computing as it has become reality today.....30 years after the film was produced...

LEARNTEC, Karlsruhe February 13-15

This year, we participated at the LEARNTEC Fair in Karlsruhe (February 13-15). LEARNTEC is focussed of e-learning technology integrating universities and industries together within an exhibition and a congress. As officially being the advisor of an ESF/BMBF funded startup company called OSOTIS, I was visiting my students who took part at this exhibition. OSOTIS is also the name of the 'Academic Video Search Engine' that serves as a testbed for our research in semantic web and multimedia search technology.

The setting of OSOTIS is the following: We are dealing with lecture recordings and offer a search service over and also inside those lecture recordings. The main advantage of OSOTIS is that most of the video post processing that is necssary for implementing a search is done in a completely automated way. Many other video search systems depend on cost intensive post processing, such as segmenting the videos into short 'learning objects', manually annotating the video segments, etc.
OSOTIS is different:
It makes use of additional information resources such as desktop presentation (e.g. powerpoint or pdf slides or simply desktop recordings) that can be synchronized with the video recording in different ways. If there is only a lecture video without any additional information source, even speech recognition technology is able to provide keywords that can be used for the video annotation. In this way, the video can be automatically segmented and the segmants can be annotated with keyword descriptors. Additionally, if there is no way to determine the content of the video, OSOTIS offers manual annotation and social tagging services to all registered users. Thus, there is always some way to search inside each lecture recording, no matter if additional information resources are available or not.
You just enter a keyword and OSOTIS will display a list of lecture recordings that are related to that keyword. By selecting one of the results, the video will start at exactly that point in time that is directly related to the user query. OSOTIS does not host the video resources on its own server, but offers only links to the original streaming servers (for streaming resources) or origin servers with podcast/videocast recordings. Thus, also all kind of video formats can be maintained, as e.g., real media, mpeg, mp4, flash video, and others.
Up to now, the main part of hosted video lectures is in given in German (and thus being hosted by german speaking universities, as also Austria or Switzerland). But, the number of lecture recordings in English will be increased soon.