The Fischlar Digital Library: Networked Access to a Video

Archive of TV News

Prof. Alan SmeatonCentre for Digital Video Processing

Dublin City University

• Most CDVP research goes into a single demonstration system called

• Recording, analysis, browsing, and playback of digital video, currently, TV from 8 channels

• Users select programmes from TV schedule with genre (category) assigned

• We capture video, we detect shots, scenes & keyframes

• Users browse programme keyframes and then playback

• We also capture teletext, 24/7 and are developing text searching

Fischlar OVERVIEW

CURRENT Use

• is very popular ...

– 1,800+ users on campus, 850 “regular”

– term-time recording 18-20 hours / day

• Used from computing labs, residences, library, in DCU and soon NUIG and UL

• Used for entertainment, research and for teaching & learning

• We also record RTE1 main TV News, every day

• We can store 300 hours (400 TV programmes) online at any one time

• We can have 200 simultaneous playbacks

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

• We currently do recording, indexing, browsing and playback

• We are developing new ways to interact with digital video:– search our digital library of video– alert on transmission of certain material– generate a portfolio of clips on a given topic– summarise a program into 5 minutes

• Also, automatic linking and weaving together of video segments

Digital Video Library

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

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RESEARCH TASKS

Our work is very visual, but to develop these functionalities involves research into:

– audio analysis– image processing– information retrieval– motion analysis– storage management– user interfaces– video coding

• Until now ... accessed from a desktop PC, with a web browser

• Can select recording from mobile phone … WAP and SMS

• Now … developing full access from a wireless PDA including playback

PLATFORMS

Summary

• Fischlar is a robust digital video library system supporting real people with real information access needs … study, research, entertainment

• Fischlar supports video analysis and indexing, plus video browsing, playback and a limited form of searching

• Fischlar-NEWS archive is the basis for our work on automatically linking of video clips