Multimedia Technologies

Annotations of multimedia documents typically have been pursued in two different directions. Either previous approaches have focused on low level descriptors, such as dominant color, or they have focused on the content dimension and corresponding annotations, such as person or vehicle. In this paper, we present a software environment to bridge between the two directions. M-OntoMat-Annotizer allows for linking low level MPEG-7 visual descriptions to conventional Semantic Web ontologies and annotations. We use M-OntoMat-Annotizer in order to construct ontologies that include prototypical instances of high-level domain concepts together with a formal specification of corresponding visual descriptors. Thus, we formalize the interrelationship of high-and low-level multimedia concept descriptions allowing for new kinds of multimedia content analysis, reasoning and retrieval.

The purpose of the study is to present the results of investigating pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to develop and use multimedia-based English language training textbooks.  The dimensional structure of the designed readiness is regarded as a complex personal integrative quality. A corresponding  survey questionnaire is compiled to determine its content. The study included 81 senior students from the foreign language faculty at Karaganda Buketov University. The research's methodology included statistical analysis of quantitative data, experimental training and participant self-assessment questionnaires. Preliminary tests were conducted in both the experimental and control groups aimed at identifying participants’ perceptions of their initial level of readiness for the development and use of multimedia-based textbooks. Participants in the experimental group participated in an experimental course on technology development and  the use of multimedia-based textbooks with the presentation of their final project. When the teaching period was over, the post-test was taken. The results demonstrated the efficiency of the complex assessment of readiness in the mentioned area enabling the definition and correction of gaps in its structural content. The designed course proved its effectiveness in practice as asserted by the post-test scores.

This article focuses on the emerging styles of visual digital aesthetics that have become relevant in light of technological advancements and the introduction of innovative tools for creating and processing digital images. The analysis is based on a cultural approach and aims to identify the influence of contemporary digital technologies on the shaping of cultural benchmarks and aesthetic preferences in art and design. The primary focus is on scrutinizing the defining attributes of modern styles that have taken shape within the digital sphere at the onset of the 21st century (such as vaporwave, seapunk, webpunk, psychedelia, pixel art, voxel art, and others) and delving into their artistic autonomy and cultural nuances. Style is defined here as both a guiding principle of artistic thought and a distinctive mode of communication among cultural agents. An integral component of this study involves comprehending how digital technologies impact the interpretation of contemporary culture and society at large. The study aims to uncover the peculiarities of modern transnational culture, as a mode of consciousness and worldview, through the lens of the artistic culture of the early 21st century. The research identifies overarching tendencies characteristic of contemporary network art, outlining the interrelations and differentiations among new digital styles. It meticulously examines distinct style clusters based on various criteria. The classification of contemporary visual styles is predicated on methods and techniques of creation and imitation, usage contexts, presentation specifics, and design elements. The results of the study can enrich the exploration of contemporary culture and visual phenomena, aiding in forecasting future trajectories within the realm of innovative visual expressions.
Статья посвящена новым стилям визуальной цифровой эстетики, ставшим актуальными в свете развития технологий и возникновения новых средств для создания и обработки цифровых изображений. Анализ основан на культурологическом подходе и направлен на выявление влияния современных цифровых технологий на формирование культурных ориентиров и эстетических предпочтений в искусстве и дизайне. Основное внимание уделяется исследованию характеристик современных стилей, сформировавшихся в цифровой среде на рубеже XXI века (среди них Vaporwave, Sea punk, Web punk, Psychedelica, пиксель-арт, воксель-арт др.), их художественной самости и культурным особенностям. Стиль в данном случае определяется как принцип художественного мышления и особая форма коммуникации субъектов культуры. Важной частью исследования является понимание того, как цифровые технологии воздействуют на интерпретацию современной культуры и общества в целом. Выявляются особенности современной транснациональной культуры (как типа сознания и картины мира) через призму художественной культуры первой четверти XXI века. В работе обозначены общие тенденции, характерные для современного сетевого искусства, представлены взаимосвязи и отличия новых цифровых стилей, а также детально рассмотрены отдельные объединения стилей по различным критериям. Классификация современных визуальных стилей базируется на методах и техниках создания и имитации, контексте использования, особенностях презентации, дизайнерских элементах. Полученные результаты могут быть применены для углубленного анализа современной культуры и визуальных явлений, а также для прогнозирования будущих направлений развития в области нового визуального.

The process of page segmentation produces a description of the spatial extent and position of various components on the document page. In this paper, we present an approach for segmentation of a general document page image using wavelets. This method uses orthonormal ...

The major goal of this work has been the development and implementation of an interactive bit mapped font editor that enables the graphics programmer to create different fonts and icons for use in application programs. The font editor, called edit-font, has been implemented on the Silicon Graphics, Inc. IRIS workstation. Editfont consists of approximately 3500 lines of code, including the program documentation. Fonts created by editfont can be retrieved from disk and high level routines implemented with the IRIS graphics library. One feature of the system is the capacity for font extraction from a picture. The steps for font generation via font extraction are explained in detail. File formats, data structures and routines used by the system are also described. Software and hardware limitations of the system are outlined, as well as possible future extensions.

With the aim to manage and retrieve the organizational knowledge, in the last years numerous proposals of models and tools for knowledge management and knowledge representation have arisen. However, most of them store knowledge in a non-structured or semi-structured way, hindering the semantic and automatic processing of this knowledge. In this chapter the authors specify a case-based organizational memory ontology, which aims at contributing to the design of an organizational memory based on cases so that it can be used to support better decision-making. One ontology goal is to serve as a base for the organizational knowledge exchange with semantic power, which can facilitate the reuse, interoperability, and automatic processing by agents. In addition, the ontology aims to be at a high level from which other more specific representations can be formulated. In order to illustrate its utility a practical case is shown.

SPACE CENTER UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA THE DESIGN OF AN the ability of the operator. Help for the operator is provided at many levels with the knowledge possessed by the interface guiding the operator to relevant and timely information. Methods of integrating intelligence and operator a_jstance into the graphics module of the interface are presented. Recommendations for how to proceed with the implementation of the TCMS toolkit are given.

The graphical intelligence and assistance capabilities of a human-computer interface for the Test, Control, and Monitor System at Kennedy Space Center are explored. The report focuses on how a particular commercial off-the-shelf graphical software package, Data Views, can be used to produce tools that build widgets such as menus, text panels, graphs, icons, windows, and ultimately complete interfaces for monitoring data from an application; controlling an application by providing input data to it; and testing an application by both monitoring and controlling it. A complete set of tools for building interfaces is described in a manual for the TCMS toolkit. Simple tools create primitive widgets such as lines, rectangles and text strings. Intermediate level tools create pictographs from primitive widgets, and connect processes to either text strings or pictographs. Other tools create input objects; Data Views supports output objects directly, thus output objects are not considered. Fin...

The process of page segmentation produces a description of the spatial extent and position of various components on the document page. In this paper, we present an approach for segmentation of a general document page image using wavelets. This method uses orthonormal ...

Note Widgets are mapped by default. This means that when you realize a widget hierarchy, the widgets included in that hierarchy will usually be displayed on screen immediately. You can control the visibility of widget hierarchies-before or after realization-using the MAP keyword to WIDGET_CONTROL. See "Controlling Widget Visibility" on page 27 for details. Note also that widgets that are visible on screen can be made unavailable to the user by setting the SENSITIVE keyword to WIDGET_CONTROL. See "Sensitizing Widgets" on page 28 for details.

In the recent time, the digital music items on the internet have been evolving to an enormous information space where we try to find/locate the piece of information of our choice by means of search engine. The current trend of searching for music by means of music consumers' keywords/tags is unable to provide satisfactory search results; and search and retrieval of music may be potentially improved if music metadata is created from semantic information provided by association of end-users' tags with acoustic metadata which is easy to extract automatically from digital music items. Based on this observation, our research objective was to investigate how music producers may be able to annotate music against MPEG-7 description (with its acoustic metadata) to deliver meaningful search results. In addressing this question, we investigated the potential of multimedia ontologies to serve as backbone for annotating music items and prospective application scenarios of semantic techno...

In the recent time, the digital music items on the internet have been evolving to an enormous information space where we try to find/locate the piece of information of our choice by means of search engine. The current trend of searching for music by means of music consumers' keywords/tags is unable to provide satisfactory search results; and search and retrieval of music may be potentially improved if music metadata is created from semantic information provided by association of end-users' tags with acoustic metadata which is easy to extract automatically from digital music items. Based on this observation, our research objective was to investigate how music producers may be able to annotate music against MPEG-7 description (with its acoustic metadata) to deliver meaningful search results. In addressing this question, we investigated the potential of multimedia ontologies to serve as backbone for annotating music items and prospective application scenarios of semantic techno...

Wlth only one process vlewsble and operational at any moment, the atandard terminal forces the user to continually switch between contexts. Yet this Is unnatural and counter-Intuitive to the normal working environment of a desk where the worker Is able to VieW and base subsequent actions on multiple pieces of Information.

Four methods of converting paper documents to computer-readable form are compared with regard to hypothetical labor cost: keyboarding, omnifont OCR, style- specific OCR, and style-constrained or style- adaptive OCR. The best choice is determined primarily by (1) the reject rates of the various OCR systems at a given error rate, (2) the fraction of the material that must be labeled

this documentation but makes no expressed or implied warrantyof any kind and assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental orconsequential damages in connection with or arising from the use of information or programs contained herein.Copyright c fl1994, 1995, 1996. Mark J. Kilgard. All rights reserved.All rights reserved. No part of this documentation may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, withoutpermission in writing from the author....

The conversion of large collections of documents from paper to digital formats that are suitable for electronic archival is a complex multi-phase process. The creation of good quality images from paper documents is just one phase. To extract relevant information that they contain, with an accuracy that fits the purpose of target applications, an automated document analysis system and a manual verification/review process are needed. The automated system needs to perform a variety of analysis and recognition tasks in order to reach an accuracy level that minimizes the manual correction effort downstream. This paper describes the complete process and the associated technologies, tools, and systems needed for the conversion of a large collection of complex documents and deployment for online web access to its information rich content. We used this process to recapture 80 years of Time magazines. The historical collection is scanned, automatically processed by advanced document analysis components to extract articles, manually verified for accuracy, and converted in a form suitable for web access. We discuss the major phases of the conversion lifecycle and the technology developed and tools used for each phase. We also discuss results in terms of recognition accuracy.

This study uses non-participant observation and qualitative interviews to examine the life of Mutawakilu a KG2 child of Choggu Yapalsi M/A KG and Primary School as a single case within the social and academic context of the home and the school to ascertain the gaps in his academic and socioemotional development. The findings of this study reveal that Mutawakilu’s life at home and in school is that of an ordinary child who is playful, happy, unconcerned, and very active.  The difference between him and most of his peers is that he is a slow learner and as such, he has difficulties handling academic tasks successfully. His situation is worsened by his family’s poor socioeconomic and educational status resulting in neglect and poor family engagement. The study recommends that Mutawakilu's parents should defy the odds and get more engaged in their child’s education by visiting his school occasionally, attending PTA meetings, and encouraging their older son to engage him in learning activities at home on daily basis. The study also entreats Mutawakilu’s class teacher to consider using individualised instruction, peer-teaching, activity-oriented learning to support Mutawakilu to overcome his learning challenges and perform satisfactorily.

The article considers the use of ICT in preschool education using the Scratch program, which forms ICT competence in children up to school age through an interactive game. The concepts are disclosed: competence-based approach, key competencies, Scratch software.

In this paper, an approach to optimization of semantic image analysis is presented by employing genetic algorithm coupled with Ontologies. Ontologies are used to interpret the image in machine understandable language. Highlevel information is represented in the form of interested domain concepts chosen and the low level information in the form of low level visual descriptors. These low level descriptors are extracted from the segmented image and visual similarity is assessed in terms of degree of confidence, which forms Initial Hypothesis set. This is further passed into genetic algorithm along with extracted spatial relations for most optimized annotation. Experiments with a collection of images belonging to a specific domain demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach.

In this article, we propose a conceptual model for video content description. This model is an extension of the EMIR model proposed for image representation and retrieval. The proposed extensions include the addition of some views such as temporal and event views that are specific to video documents, the extension of the structural view to the temporal structure of video documents, and the extension of the perceptive view to motion descriptors. We have kept the formalism of conceptual graphs for the representation of the semantic content. The various concepts and relations involved can be taken from general and/or domain specific ontologies and completed by lists of instances (individuals). The proposed model has been applied on TREC video 2002 and 2003 corpora that mainly contain TV news and commercials videos.

Mobile devices equipped with features (e.g., camera, network connectivity and media player) are increasingly being used for different tasks such as web browsing, document reading and photography. While the portability of mobile devices makes them desirable for pervasive access to information, their small screen real-estate often imposes restrictions on the amount of information that can be displayed and manipulated on them. On the other hand, large displays have become commonplace in many outdoor as well as indoor environments. While they provide an efficient way of presenting and disseminating information, they provide little support for digital interactivity or physical accessibility. Researchers argue that mobile phones provide an efficient and portable way of interacting with large displays, and the latter can overcome the limitations of the small screens of mobile devices by providing a larger presentation and interaction space. However, distributing user interface (UI) elements across a mobile device and a large display can cause switching of visual attention and that may affect task performance. This thesis specifically explores how the switching of visual attention across a handheld mobile device and a vertical large display can affect a single user's task performance during mobile interaction with large displays. It introduces a taxonomy based on the factors associated with the visual arrangement of Multi Display User Interfaces (MDUIs) that can influence visual attention switching during interaction with MDUIs. It presents an empirical analysis of the effects of different distributions of input and output across mobile and large displays on the user's task performance, subjective workload and preference in the multiple-widget selection task, and in visual search tasks with maps, texts and photos. Experimental results show that the selection of multiple widgets replicated on the mobile device as well as on the large display, versus those shown only on the large display, is faster despite the cost of initial attention switching in the former. On the other hand, a hybrid UI configuration where the visual output is distributed across the mobile and large displays is the worst, or equivalent to the worst, configuration in all the visual search tasks. A mobile device-controlled large display configuration performs best in the map search task and equal to best (i.e., tied with a mobile-only configuration) in text-and photo-search tasks.

Attaching a large external display can help a mobile device user view more content at once. This paper reports on a study investigating how different configurations of input and output across displays affect performance, subjective workload and preferences in map, text and photo search tasks. Experimental results show that a hybrid configuration where visual output is distributed across displays is worst or equivalent to worst in all tasks. A mobile device-controlled large display configuration performs best in the map search task and equal to best in text and photo search tasks (tied with a mobile-only configuration). After conducting a detailed analysis of the performance differences across different UI configurations, we give recommendations for the design of distributed user interfaces.

Attaching a large external display can help a mobile device user view more content at once. This paper reports on a study investigating how different configurations of input and output across displays affect performance, subjective workload and preferences in map, text and photo search tasks. Experimental results show that a hybrid configuration where visual output is distributed across displays is worst or equivalent to worst in all tasks. A mobile device-controlled large display configuration performs best in the map search task and equal to best in text and photo search tasks (tied with a mobile-only configuration). After conducting a detailed analysis of the performance differences across different UI configurations, we give recommendations for the design of distributed user interfaces.

This chapter focuses on the effect of a learning environment in which biological, physical and technological ways of perceiving Mandarin Chinese sounds have been used. One of the most important tools of this environment is the use of a speech analysis tool for audio and visual feedback. This is done by way of incorporating a visual representation of student’s production that can be easily compared to the speech of a native speaker. It is the contention of this chapter that such an interactive feedback tool in conjunction with other feedback mechanisms can provide opportunities for increasing the effectiveness of feedback in language learning.

Note Widgets are mapped by default. This means that when you realize a widget hierarchy, the widgets included in that hierarchy will usually be displayed on screen immediately. You can control the visibility of widget hierarchies-before or after realization-using the MAP keyword to WIDGET_CONTROL. See "Controlling Widget Visibility" on page 27 for details. Note also that widgets that are visible on screen can be made unavailable to the user by setting the SENSITIVE keyword to WIDGET_CONTROL. See "Sensitizing Widgets" on page 28 for details.

The challenge of managing large scale media assets has led to the development of metadata schemas that are expected to enable efficient search and retrieval of multimedia content. Those approaches propose schemas that can range from simple keyword based descriptions to complex hierarchical organization of information. However, effective media asset management requires more than content searching and retrieval: underlying infrastructures are usually complex, require the use of a number of different equipment and management decisions have to be done based on information available from the multimedia metadata layer as well as on data describing system resources and capabilities. In this paper we propose a new ontology that aggregates information from different sources and enables a top level business oriented view of multimedia archives.

In this paper, an approach to optimization of semantic image analysis is presented by employing genetic algorithm coupled with Ontologies. Ontologies are used to interpret the image in machine understandable language. Highlevel information is represented in the form of interested domain concepts chosen and the low level information in the form of low level visual descriptors. These low level descriptors are extracted from the segmented image and visual similarity is assessed in terms of degree of confidence, which forms Initial Hypothesis set. This is further passed into genetic algorithm along with extracted spatial relations for most optimized annotation. Experiments with a collection of images belonging to a specific domain demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach.

The conversion of large collections of documents from paper to digital formats that are suitable for electronic archival is a complex multi-phase process. The creation of good quality images from paper documents is just one phase. To extract relevant information that they contain, with an accuracy that fits the purpose of target applications, an automated document analysis system and a manual verification/review process are needed. The automated system needs to perform a variety of analysis and recognition tasks in order to reach an accuracy level that minimizes the manual correction effort downstream. This paper describes the complete process and the associated technologies, tools, and systems needed for the conversion of a large collection of complex documents and deployment for online web access to its information rich content. We used this process to recapture 80 years of Time magazines. The historical collection is scanned, automatically processed by advanced document analysis components to extract articles, manually verified for accuracy, and converted in a form suitable for web access. We discuss the major phases of the conversion lifecycle and the technology developed and tools used for each phase. We also discuss results in terms of recognition accuracy.

Thesis submitted to Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) and International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Joint program of Master of Science in Geoinformatics ... Chairman: Prof. (Dr). ...

Attaching a large external display can help a mobile device user view more content at once. This paper reports on a study investigating how different configurations of input and output across displays affect performance, subjective workload and preferences in map, text and photo search tasks. Experimental results show that a hybrid configuration where visual output is distributed across displays is worst or equivalent to worst in all tasks. A mobile device-controlled large display configuration performs best in the map search task and equal to best in text and photo search tasks (tied with a mobile-only configuration). After conducting a detailed analysis of the performance differences across different UI configurations, we give recommendations for the design of distributed user interfaces.

The graphical intelligence and assistance capabilities of a human-computer interface for the Test, Control, and Monitor System at Kennedy Space Center are explored. The report focuses on how a particular commercial off-the-shelf graphical software package, Data Views, can be used to produce tools that build widgets such as menus, text panels, graphs, icons, windows, and ultimately complete interfaces for monitoring data from an application; controlling an application by providing input data to it; and testing an application by both monitoring and controlling it. A complete set of tools for building interfaces is described in a manual for the TCMS toolkit. Simple tools create primitive widgets such as lines, rectangles and text strings. Intermediate level tools create pictographs from primitive widgets, and connect processes to either text strings or pictographs. Other tools create input objects; Data Views supports output objects directly, thus output objects are not considered. Fin...

Enabling an intelligent access to multimedia data requires a powerful description language. In this paper, we demonstrate, through a particular scenario, why the MPEG-7 standard fails to fulfill this task. We introduce then our proposition: an audiovisual specific description language (AVDL), modular, reduced, but designed to be extensible. This language is centered on the notions of descriptor and structure. A descriptor can be a low-level feature, automatically extracted from the signal, or a higher semantic concept that will be used to annotate the video documents. It can have some properties including a formal definition encoded in the new Semantic Web languages, which provides a formal semantics. Finally, the descriptors can be combined into structures according to defined models that provide description patterns. This notion of structure is close to what is named Description Schemes in the MPEG-7 standard, but with more expressiveness as our proposed language allows to define its own models. We show how our motivated scenario can henceforth be carried out. We give also some implementation details of our language stressing on its XML syntax and the API developed for accessing the data model. We show finally how it will be used into the FERIA project, whose goal is to provide a generic framework for developing multimedia production applications for new delivery channels such as interactive television.

Thesis submitted to Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) and International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Joint program of Master of Science in Geoinformatics ... Chairman: Prof. (Dr). ...

In this paper we present the construction of an ontology that represents the structure of the MPEG-7 visual part. The goal of this ontology is to enable machines to generate and understand visual descriptions which can be used for multimedia reasoning. Within the specification, MPEG-7 definitions (description schemes and descriptors) are expressed in XML Schema. Although XML Schema provides the syntactic, structural, cardinality and datatyping constraints required by MPEG-7, it does not provide the semantic interoperability required to make MPEG-7 visual descriptors accessible by other domains. The knowledge representation provided by the ontology can be used to develop tools which perform knowledge-based reasoning. For the construction of the ontology we use the RDFS ontology language. We present the problems that occurred, mainly, due to the RDFS modelling limitations. Finally, we propose a way to apply reasoning using the VD ontology.

In this paper we present the construction of an ontology that represents the structure of the MPEG-7 visual part. The goal of this ontology is to enable machines to generate and understand visual descriptions which can be used for multimedia reasoning. Within the specification, MPEG-7 definitions (description schemes and descriptors) are expressed in XML Schema. Although XML Schema provides the syntactic, structural, cardinality and datatyping constraints required by MPEG-7, it does not provide the semantic interoperability required to make MPEG-7 visual descriptors accessible by other domains. The knowledge representation provided by the ontology can be used to develop tools which perform knowledge-based reasoning. For the construction of the ontology we use the RDFS ontology language. We present the problems that occurred, mainly, due to the RDFS modelling limitations. Finally, we propose a way to apply reasoning using the VD ontology.

This paper addresses the issue of what are the efficient uses of multimedia technologies in teaching processes, and what are the conditions that require these technologies in online learning. The background of this paper is made by exploring online master programs, given the burgeoning interest of this emerging phenomenon of the future of distance learning. Rigorous analysis and careful measurement of communication required were covered by empirical data. This analysis is to provide an early window into several communications processes and tasks that occur in virtual context of learning, using multimedia technologies.

In this paper we propose to define a measure of visual similarity to compare different pages in a corpus. This measure is based on the analysis of the visual layout saliency of the page composition. This similarity is computed using both the document layout and characteristics of the text itself. The text characterization uses statistical features derived from textural primitives. Our purpose is to establish perceptive links between documents in order to facilitate their storage and their retrieval. In this paper we present two possible applications of this measure of similarity: the query of the corpus by example and the documents classification. In the first application, we extract documents that are the most visually similar to a document, given as query. In the second application, the similarity measure is used to classify the document under investigation using its visual similarity to a reference set of documents. Our test corpus is extracted from the Finland MTDB Oulu multi-genre database 1 that provides a great diversity of page layouts and contents.

MPEG-7 provides a rich set of tools for describing multimedia content. Among them, the Semantic Descriptor Scheme (DS) is used to describe the semantics of the content in terms of Events, Objects, Concepts, Places, Time and Abstraction. However, to describe similar facts presented in different multimedia contents, different semantic descriptions may result, even after following the MPEG-7 Semantic DS. These semantic descriptions may be unified in order to enhance the overall knowledge about the associated multimedia content. In this paper we propose an ontology that semantically represents the structure of MPEG-7 Semantic DS and acts primarily as a resource of such unification. The knowledge representation provided by this ontology can be used to develop tools that perform automatic multimedia reasoning from different existing semantic descriptions, which are narrated with other domain specific ontologies.

Traditional 3D graphics programming using OpenGL in C or C++ often requires significant development time by expert graphics programmers. The time costs associated with learning to use OpenGL calls in the C or C++ environment and compiling, linking, and testing during application development are typically extensive. Therefore, new tools that reduce the development time associated with graphics programming or make graphics programming available to a broader spectrum of programmers paves the way towards speedier and more sophisticated graphical software development. An interpreted environment accommodates faster graphics application development by eliminating the need to frequently recompile code in order to observe the effects of OpenGL calls to the current graphics state. Utilizing the functional programming language J with appropriate OpenGL bindings, an interpreted approach provides an interactive environment suitable for less time consuming OpenGL-like graphics programming. This paper details design and implementation issues involved in creating OpenGL bindings for the J programming language. In addition, an explanation of one approach to creating such bindings and suggestions for possible improvements are also included. 1

In the era of World Wide Web, dependency has been increasing on real-time response, communication, disaster preparedness, and analysis by our society, experts from different areas including paramedics, risk management team, police, and firefighters. To ensure real-time response, appropriate information retrieval, expediting undertaking and response preparation and handling communique with all involved parties, there is a requirement of digitizing the resources, concepts semantically along with exploiting the information embedded in multimedia content. We also know that ontology has been proven the excellent mean of digitization. So through this paper, we propose a multimedia-driven disaster management ontology, featuring a different representation scheme integrating the multimedia content. This will offer semantic analysis and interoperability across heterogeneous multimedia data sources, hence facilitating in real-time disaster management.

Thesis submitted to Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) and International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Joint program of Master of Science in Geoinformatics ... Chairman: Prof. (Dr). ...

Many separate applications axe being developed, tested, and used in the field of medical imaging. A Telepathology System (TPS) is one such application, allowing pathologist access to microscopy and patient files at remote workstations, through a communications network coupled with a pathologist viewing workstation. This thesis outlines the development of a user interface pathology workstation. It models mi­ croscope emulation in place of actual remote site microscopy by utilizing previously recorded specimen slide images. In addition, it models a communication network, and a remote site WS. User scenarios and performance characteristics for all three subsystems are outlined. The thesis confirms TPS can benefit telepathology by pro­ viding two way communications between remote sites, access to patient demographic files and prior specimen images for comperative study, and the benefit of long distance consultation. Finally, a discussion of an actual implementation is presented.

The challenge of managing large scale media assets has led to the development of metadata schemas that are expected to enable efficient search and retrieval of multimedia content. Those approaches propose schemas that can range from simple keyword based descriptions to complex hierarchical organization of information. However, effective media asset management requires more than content searching and retrieval: underlying infrastructures are usually complex, require the use of a number of different equipment and management decisions have to be done based on information available from the multimedia metadata layer as well as on data describing system resources and capabilities. In this paper we propose a new ontology that aggregates information from different sources and enables a top level business oriented view of multimedia archives.

The challenge of managing large scale media assets has led to the development of metadata schemas that are expected to enable efficient search and retrieval of multimedia content. Those approaches propose schemas that can range from simple keyword based descriptions to complex hierarchical organization of information. However, effective media asset management requires more than content searching and retrieval: underlying infrastructures are usually complex, require the use of a number of different equipment and management decisions have to be done based on information available from the multimedia metadata layer as well as on data describing system resources and capabilities. In this paper we propose a new ontology that aggregates information from different sources and enables a top level business oriented view of multimedia archives.

Multimedia feature graphs are employed to represent features of images, video, audio, or text. Various techniques exist to extract such features from multimedia objects. In this paper, we describe the extension of such a feature graph to represent the meaning of such multimedia features and introduce a formal context-free PS-grammar (Phrase Structure grammar) to automatically generate human-understandable natural language expressions based on such features. To achieve this, we define a semantic extension to syntactic multimedia feature graphs and introduce a set of production rules for phrases of natural language English expressions. This explainability, which is founded on a semantic model provides the opportunity to represent any multimedia feature in a human-readable and human-understandable form, which largely closes the gap between the technical representation of such features and their semantics. We show how this explainability can be formally defined and demonstrate the corre...

This article presents graphical tools designed to work with Csound. First section introduces the context in which those tools were built. Then, second part presents MIUP, an open source graphical library designed to build audio softwares. Finally, last part describes jo tracker, a tracker software for Csound built with MIUP.

MPEG-7 provides a rich set of tools for describing multimedia content. Among them, the Semantic Descriptor Scheme (DS) is used to describe the semantics of the content in terms of Events, Objects, Concepts, Places, Time and Abstraction. However, to describe similar facts presented in different multimedia contents, different semantic descriptions may result, even after following the MPEG-7 Semantic DS. These semantic descriptions may be unified in order to enhance the overall knowledge about the associated multimedia content. In this paper we propose an ontology that semantically represents the structure of MPEG-7 Semantic DS and acts primarily as a resource of such unification. The knowledge representation provided by this ontology can be used to develop tools that perform automatic multimedia reasoning from different existing semantic descriptions, which are narrated with other domain specific ontologies.