Synopsis of Presentations given at the Documentation Seminar, London 7-8 May 1998

This two-day seminar was organised by the FIAT/IFTA Documentation Commission and sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). To request copies of presentation handouts please contact FIAT Administrative Secretary Gösta Johansson.

Thursday, 7 May agenda:

Euromedia and Digital Workflow, by Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz, Digital Equipment GmbH European Applied Research Center (CEC Karlsruhe), and Ulla Kreuder, Südwestfunk (SWF, Germany). Neidecker-Lutz and Kreuder gave a demonstration of the automated video analysis, documentation and retrieval system developed by Digital and TecMath Digital Media Division for the Euromedia consortium of broadcast archives. Euromedia will enable member archives BBC (UK), ORF (Austria), SDR (Germany), SVT (Sweden) and SWF (Germany) to exchange resources through a distributed multimedia database system.

How to Build an Integrated Workflow within a Broadcasting Company (A Case Study from SVT), by Eva-Lis Green, Head of Documentation & Information Systems, Sveriges Television (SVT) Television Archives. Green discussed an on-going project at SVT to integrate pre-existing, autonomous information systems for programme planning and copyright, programme and still image cataloguing, continuity control, production planning, news editing, stock control, translations, and accounting into one integrated information management system. With the new system descriptive information about programs is captured at the planning and editing stages and transferred into the programme catalogue, creating new roles for Television Archives staff to coordinate system requirements, establish rules and educate system users. (Handouts available.)

The EBU-SMPTE Task force Work on Metadata, by David Bradshaw, BBC. Bradshaw discussed the European Broadcasting Union ¬ Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (EBU-SMPTE) Task force's work to define digital video standards for encoding metadata (data about the video). The Task force was formed to address compatibility problems with emerging digital production technologies, and has taken steps to define a "universal video metadata dictionary," which includes nine classes of metadata elements. (Handouts available.)

Metadata Developments in the Library Community, by Michael Day, UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) at the University of Bath. Day discussed several projects within the library community which use the Dublin Core for identifying digital resources searched on the World Wide Web. The Dublin Core is a 15-element metadata set defined by Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and others. (Handouts available.) Web sites: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/ http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core

ENPS, by Mel Martin, BBC. Martin gave a demonstration of the Electronic News Production System (ENPS), an information retrieval system which he designed for BBC journalists to search current news wire stories, news reel scripts, and other textual documents. The ENPS features a streamlined, user-friendly graphical user interface and particularly fast, efficient searching capabilities.

The Sony Archive Solution, by Ian Burkinshaw, Sony Product Specialist for News and Archive Systems in the UK Market. Burkinshaw discussed the Sony Archive System, a video cataloguing, storage and retrieval system designed for a television production working environment. Sony Archive System comprises a networked Oracle Universal Data Server and Oracle 7 database for cataloguing and browsing video, an NT4 operating system and an advanced automated video mass storage system. Its design is modular and scaleable to fit the needs of various archives and to facilitate future growth and system upgrades. (Handouts available.)

The Value of Archive Cataloguing, by Chris Wilkie, Cataloguing and Indexing Manager, BBC Information and Archives. Wilkie presented the results of a recent BBC Information and Archives survey which compared the searching and retrieval effectiveness of television production staff text documents made accessible through automatic indexing, with that of indexing work by BBC's archive staff. The survey measured search success rates in a variety of ways, and in all cases the success rates were much higher for archive data than for production data. For example, 83% of searches against archive data for 1000 sample entries found all possible correct answers, whereas only 32% of searches against production data for the same sample entries were able to retrieve all correct answers. (Handouts available.)

Friday, 8 May agenda:

Internet TV, by Ulrich Booms, Spiegel On-Line. Booms demonstrated the impressive multimedia Internet-site of the well known German magazine Der Spiegel. He explained the structure and the facilities of the site and showed us in which fashion it could be accessed and used by both the general public and the journalists working for Der Spiegel. The webmasters of Spiegel On-Line maintain extensive statistics on the use of the site.

BBC Media Data Exchange Project, by Carol Owens, BBC, Richard Hopper, BBC, David Chan, BBC. Owens, Hopper and Chan, leaders of a BBC project planning group, discussed their vision for a digital media management system which will be integrated with other BBC programme and production planning and television archives systems. (Handouts available.)

The BBC Digital Media Asset Management Centre Project, by Project Director Francis Galliano. Galliano discussed a series of projects currently in work at BBC to unify access to its information and archives resources via Web browsers on the BBC Intranet. Projects include preservation transfer of analogue video formats to D3, creation of a user-friendly Web browser for access to the television catalogue (INFAX), transfer of music and sound catalogues into INFAX, upgrade of digital still image archive into ELVIS, testing of a digital video cataloguing system (Euromedia) and development of an object oriented database for programme documents. (Handouts available.)

Motion Picture Expert's Group, by Bill Christmas, University of Surrey. Christmas, a member of the MPEG-7 Working Group, reported on current issues under consideration for development of MPEG-7 digital video standards. (Handouts available.) MPEG home page

Towards Automatic Image Indexing, by Ed Tan, Word and Image Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tan explained the theory behind automatic text and video indexing. Although he predicts that fully automated video indexing may be as long as 50 years from realisation, Tan reminded us that video indexing tools should be developed to facilitate rather than replace human analysis of video. (Handouts available.)

Automatic Video Indexing, by Dan Agan, Excalibur. Agan gave a demonstration of Excalibur Screening Room, a digital video indexing system which features refined scene detection capabilities and indexing of synchronised closed caption text.

Silvia Stewart
Information Dynamics, Inc. (IDI) Houston, Texas
Member of the Documentation Commission of FIAT/IFTA