Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language

This paper describes the development and student use of Web-based prelabs in freshman-level Quantitative Analysis and senior-level Instrumental Analysis. The main goal of these prelabs is to help students prepare to do experiments or use instrumentation before they enter the lab. Typical Quantitative Analysis prelabs include a Beer's law tutorial and a tutorial and demonstration of a Spectronic 20 spectrophotometer. Spectroscopy prelabs in Instrumental Analysis include tutorials on the principles and instrumentation of atomic absorption, atomic emission, UV-Vis molecular absorption, and molecular fluorescence spectroscopy. The prelabs contain some or all of the following: textual descriptions, instrument schematics, graphical instrument tours, multiple-choice questions, slide shows, and video demonstrations. The programming tools used to deliver the prelabs include clickable-image maps, JavaScript, PERL scripts, and RealVideo streaming video. Student and instructor perceptions indicate that the prelab assignments help the students prepare for their lab work and help teach the principles of the experiments or instrumentation. The overall effectiveness of the prelabs is hindered by the difficulty in getting students to take greater responsibility for their own lab preparation and outcomes. Using these prelabs has made evident the challenge of teaching students to use all available learning aids effectively: lectures, textbook, lab work, and multimedia.

For several years, the lectures in our introductory Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) courses have been videotaped and webcast, mainly as an aid to students with time conflicts that prevent them from attending class. We present the Weiner Lecture Archives-a project to identify, archive, filter, and make available the best of these lectures with their notes on the web. We provide a hierarchical, ontology-driven interface to entire courses, which allows users to choose any topic and/or subtopic to view, from a small snippet of one lecture to one that spans many lectures. Once the topic is chosen, our system launches RealPlayer to play the lecture video in one window while showing synchronized lecture notes or slides in another window. By the spring of 2007, we had finished encoding our department's entire four-course introductory sequence into this system. Student use and feedback has been encouraging, and we hope to expand to other EECS courses in the near future.

In this paper we present some work on indexing streaming media content that is developed for educational delivery over the Internet or by CD-ROM. First, we describe a tool that we have developed for automatically indexing a set of PowerPoint slides. This paper also describes how, once the lecture information (keywords) from these slide s is loaded into a database that contains information from all other courses, a user can perform a keyword search over that lecture, or over all lectures for the course.

Video Content continues to strenghten on the Web, because of that fact, it is neccessary to include video content with suitable accessibility requirements to be used by all people. User Agent (such as player, browser), also have to include accessibility requirements. In this paper a set of basic guidelines is included for professionals who want to embed video players on their Web.

This work presents some considerations about the process of producing and the use of audio and video components in Web based courses. We discuss some aspects related to the infrastructure necessary to produce and deliver this material and we present some conclusions of our experience in producing our Web based courses using these elements. Index Terms: distance learning, streaming technology applications, Web based courses. One of the most relevant issues in the distance learning process is to grasp and maintain the student’s interest and concentration. To achieve this goal, the use of multimedia elements is an essential and powerful mechanism. As examples of multimedia elements we have video, audio, pictures

The World Wide Web has since its beginning provided linking to and from text documents encoded in HTML. The Web has evolved and most Web browsers now support a rich set of media types either by default or by the use of specialised content handlers, known as plug-ins. The limitations of the Web linking model are well known and they also extend into the realm of the other media types currently supported by Web browsers. This paper introduces the Mimicry system that allows authors and readers to link to and from temporal media (video and audio) on the Web. The system is integrated with the Arakne Environment, an open hypermedia integration aimed at Web augmentation. The links created are stored externally, allowing for links to and from resources not owned by the (link) author. Based on the experiences a critique is raised of the limited APIs supported by plug-ins.

Multimedia content covers the Web, and we should provide access to all people. For this reason, it is very important to take into account accessibility requirements in the player to avoid barriers and to ensure access to this multimedia content as well as their resources. One of the most frequent barriers is the technological obstacle: the necessity for the user to install the required plug-ins in to order to access video. The new standard HTML5 provides a solution to this problem. However, it does not fully support accessibility requirements of W3C standards, including WCAG and interaction requirement of UAAG. This paper 1 introduces an overall study of this new standard in relation to accessibility requirements for the players as well as an accessible HTML5 Media Player.

Traditional media, such as text, image, audio and video, have long been the main media resources and granted full support of standard desktop tools and applications. Interactive rich multimedia documents, adding resources such as video or synthetic animations and relying on complex synchronization among objects, are now making their entrance into the world as new multimedia formats emerge. In this context, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) is receiving more and more attention from content authors due to its fine property of multimedia synchronization and authoring interactivity for the content production. At the same time, MPEG-4 is designed to address the requirement of new generation of highly interactive multimedia applications, while simultaneously maintaining the support of traditional applications. MPEG-4 provides facilities (XMT and BIFS) to integrate and synchronize, spatially and temporally, many different media objects together. However, these facilities lack appropriate authoring tools to widen its audience and subsequently limit the application. In this paper, we present a comparative analysis between SMIL and XMT, the textual description of MPEG-4, to illustrate the pros and cons of these two major interactive media. And then we propose a conversion scheme from SMIL to the Binary Format for Scenes (BIFS) of MPEG-4 to take advantage of both formats. According to this scheme, we design the real implementation method using the current available tools and discuss the purpose and significance of such conversion.

This paper introduces video substrates, an information substrate-based approach for working with video. Video sub strates provide mechanisms for fundamental video editing functions, from overlaying clips to creating transitions, sub titles and applying effects. They support pre-recorded, live https://videostrates.projects.cavi.au.dk.

The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) allows Web designers to design complicated and vivid multimedia presentations in a declarative manner. In this paper, an abstract semantic model called Multimedia Augmented Transition Network (MATN) is used to ...

Emerging multimodal sensing, embedded computing, and networking technologies have created opportunities to blend sensing and computation with physical spaces resulting in instrumented pervasive spaces (IPS). Sensor data captured in such environments can be used to model the state of the physical world, which, in turn, can be exploited for tasks such as information customization, building automation, inventory management and access control. We have created such a campus-wide instrumented pervasive space at UC Irvine ...

For several years, the lectures in our introductory Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) courses have been videotaped and webcast, mainly as an aid to students with time conflicts that prevent them from attending class. We present the Weiner Lecture Archives-a project to identify, archive, filter, and make available the best of these lectures with their notes on the web. We provide a hierarchical, ontology-driven interface to entire courses, which allows users to choose any topic and/or subtopic to view, from a small snippet of one lecture to one that spans many lectures. Once the topic is chosen, our system launches RealPlayer to play the lecture video in one window while showing synchronized lecture notes or slides in another window. By the spring of 2007, we had finished encoding our department's entire four-course introductory sequence into this system. Student use and feedback has been encouraging, and we hope to expand to other EECS courses in the near future.

In general, multimedia presentation can be categorized into two major categories namely stored multimedia presentation and live multimedia presentation. Unfortunately, the information of such categorization of multimedia presentation (particularly for live multimedia presentation) is poor even in common resources such as web, and literatures. Both multimedia presentations do really exist, and they hold important roles in many user domains. Leveraging the categorization of multimedia presentation is urgently required since at present there are many researches being conducted in both multimedia presentations. This work aims to give a global view about multimedia presentation as well as sharpening the categorization of multimedia presentation. In this paper, we are recommending to propose a model for Presentation System using SMIL-driven approach. Then from the proposed model of Presentation System can be derived a general framework for the live multimedia presentation applications.

Online subtitle databases allow users to easily find subtitle documents in multiple languages for thousands of films and TV series episodes. However, getting the subtitle document that gives satisfactory synchronization on the first attempt is like hitting the jackpot. The truth is that this process often involves a lot of trialand-error because multiple versions of subtitle documents have distinct synchronization references, given that they are targeted at variations of the same audiovisual content. Building on our previous efforts to address this problem, in this paper we formalize and validate a two-phase subtitle synchronization framework. The benefit over current approaches lays in the usage of audio fingerprint annotations generated from the base audio signal as second-level synchronization anchors. This way, we allow the media player to dynamically fix during playback the most common cases of subtitle synchronization misalignment that compromise users' watching experience. Results from our evaluation process indicate that our framework has minimal impact on existing subtitle documents and formats as well as on the playback performance.

The World Wide Web has since its beginning provided linking to and from text documents encoded in HTML. The Web has evolved and most Web browsers now support a rich set of media types either by default or by the use of specialised content handlers, known as plug-ins. The limitations of the Web linking model are well known and they also extend into the realm of the other media types currently supported by Web browsers. This paper introduces the Mimicry system that allows authors and readers to link to and from temporal media (video and audio) on the Web. The system is integrated with the Arakne Environment, an open hypermedia integration aimed at Web augmentation. The links created are stored externally, allowing for links to and from resources not owned by the (link) author. Based on the experiences a critique is raised of the limited APIs supported by plug-ins.

For several years, the lectures in our introductory Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) courses have been videotaped and webcast, mainly as an aid to students with time conflicts that prevent them from attending class. We present the Weiner Lecture Archives-a project to identify, archive, filter, and make available the best of these lectures with their notes on the web. We provide a hierarchical, ontology-driven interface to entire courses, which allows users to choose any topic and/or subtopic to view, from a small snippet of one lecture to one that spans many lectures. Once the topic is chosen, our system launches RealPlayer to play the lecture video in one window while showing synchronized lecture notes or slides in another window. By the spring of 2007, we had finished encoding our department's entire four-course introductory sequence into this system. Student use and feedback has been encouraging, and we hope to expand to other EECS courses in the near future.

Current business presentations are commonly multimedia-based and with the realization of the mobile enterprise, accessing of such presentations stored on servers from mobile devices will become increasingly common. However as a roaming mobile device user moves, factors that change include the local wireless network technology, the available bandwidth, the currently closest source of the media files and even the continuity

This paper investigates the Italian proposed Act n. 1496, aimed at replacing the individual negotiation of broadcast rights for soccer events with collective selling. In particular, the reasons and phases that have led to the individual negotiation of rights are scrutinised also in order to better evaluate if the collective mechanism will be able to solve the problems of solidarity and competitive balance among sport teams. Against this backdrop, the article analyses and critically assesses the anticompetitive impact of the joint selling with specific emphasis on the main antitrust proceedings recently concluded by the European Commission.Il contributo analizza il progetto di riforma relativo alla titolarita e vendita collettiva dei diritti sulle manifestazioni calcistiche. In particolare, dopo aver ricostruito le tappe e i motivi che hanno condotto alla modalita di contrattazione individuale, viene approfondito il tema della cessione centralizzata, attribuita alla Lega Calcio, e si...

Multimedia content covers the Web, and we should provide access to all people. For this reason, it is very important to take into account accessibility requirements in the player to avoid barriers and to ensure access to this multimedia content as well as their resources. One of the most frequent barriers is the technological obstacle: the necessity for the user to install the required plug-ins in to order to access video. The new standard HTML5 provides a solution to this problem. However, it does not fully support accessibility requirements of W3C standards, including WCAG and interaction requirement of UAAG. This paper 1 introduces an overall study of this new standard in relation to accessibility requirements for the players as well as an accessible HTML5 Media Player.

The use of technology is growing in every field of education, and not only in the education of disabled students but also as a learning resource for everybody. The teachers are more and more introducing these digital contents in their lessons and there are many resources related to learning on internet.. If an equal access to these resources is guaranteed, then we can avoid students feeling that their learning capacity is limited due to a possible inaccessibility to them. Inclusive methodologies have to be followed to reach these objectives applying the standards such as Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) and rules of accessibility in the design and development of web pages, technical supporting, software, author tools, etc. This papers describes a practical case with two accessible interfaces of multimedia resources implemented with Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL.).

In this paper, we present the design and development of a real-time interactive virtual classroom multimedia distance learning system at the University of Washington. There has been rapid progress in digital media compression research, and the delivery of media data on the public Internet is becoming widespread. A real-time interactive virtual classroom allows a remote participant to not only receive a live class feed, but also to interact in a live class by asking questions with audio, video in real-time using an Internet connection. Many instructors use electronically prepared slides during their class. The traditional video coding algorithms are not able to compress this slide data very well at low bit-rate. We propose a web-based real-time presentation system for the electronic slides. Instructors also write text on a white board or a piece of paper during the class. At low bit-rate, the conventional video encoding algorithms cannot encode this handwritten text video with enough fidelity, resulting in an illegible decoded video. We propose an extension of the well known bilevel image encoding algorithms to handle the handwritten text video. Our method results in decoded video frames which can be read very clearly when encoded at low bit-rate. We have developed a set of tools which allows recording the live classroom session and automatic creation of a synchronized multimedia integration language (SMIL) presentation, which can be used for a later viewing. Index Terms-Distance learning, JBIG video, multicast, video-on-demand, virtual classroom. I. INTRODUCTION T HE ultimate goal of a real-time distance learning system is to provide the remote participant with most of the capabilities and experiences that an in-class participant receives. There has been rapid progress in digital media compression research. Starting with MPEG1 [1] and MPEG2 [2] at the higher bit-rate range (Mb/s) to H.261 [3] (64 Kb/s) and H.263(+) [4] (Kb/s) at the low bit-rate range, digital video coding standards can achieve a bit-rate and quality suitable for the various network bandwidths in the current heterogeneous networking environments. The MPEG4 [5] video coding standard is currently being formalized and aims at providing content-based access along with the compression. In the digital audio/speech coding, MPEG, GSM [6], and G.723.1 [7] are among the state-of-the-art coding standards.

For several years, the lectures in our introductory Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) courses have been videotaped and webcast, mainly as an aid to students with time conflicts that prevent them from attending class. We present the Weiner Lecture Archives-a project to identify, archive, filter, and make available the best of these lectures with their notes on the web. We provide a hierarchical, ontology-driven interface to entire courses, which allows users to choose any topic and/or subtopic to view, from a small snippet of one lecture to one that spans many lectures. Once the topic is chosen, our system launches RealPlayer to play the lecture video in one window while showing synchronized lecture notes or slides in another window. By the spring of 2007, we had finished encoding our department's entire four-course introductory sequence into this system. Student use and feedback has been encouraging, and we hope to expand to other EECS courses in the near future.

Lecture recording provides learning material for local and distance education. Screen recording offers a flexible technique for lecture recording as it allows to capture virtually any material displayed during a presentation. Unfortunately, the navigational features and search abilities are rather limited, because grabbing and storing pixel data deprives the structure and content of the source documents. This paper presents how analyses of such pixel based recordings deliver useful navigational indices and provide full-text search automatically. In order to establish these research results, we have (partly) implemented the ideas within our own screen recording environment called TeleTeachingTool.

The use of technology is growing in every field of education, and not only in the education of disabled students but also as a learning resource for everybody. The teachers are more and more introducing these digital contents in their lessons and there are many resources related to learning on internet.. If an equal access to these resources is guaranteed, then we can avoid students feeling that their learning capacity is limited due to a possible inaccessibility to them. Inclusive methodologies have to be followed to reach these objectives applying the standards such as Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) and rules of accessibility in the design and development of web pages, technical supporting, software, author tools, etc. This papers describes a practical case with two accessible interfaces of multimedia resources implemented with Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL.).

The use of technology is growing in every field of education, and not only in the education of disabled students but also as a learning resource for everybody. The teachers are more and more introducing these digital contents in their lessons and there are many resources related to learning on internet.. If an equal access to these resources is guaranteed, then we can avoid students feeling that their learning capacity is limited due to a possible inaccessibility to them. Inclusive methodologies have to be followed to reach these objectives applying the standards such as Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) and rules of accessibility in the design and development of web pages, technical supporting, software, author tools, etc. This papers describes a practical case with two accessible interfaces of multimedia resources implemented with Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL.).

The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) [Aya01] is an W3C [W3C03] specification for authoring multimedia documents. Although SMIL has XML like syntactic constructs, unlike XML, SMIL compositions have an intended semantics stemming from intuitive notions of playing out many media streams relative to each other. Although there are many excellent models for XML access control [DdVPS00, DdVPS02, BCF01, BCFM00, SF02, KH00, GB02, KW02, GF03], they do not respect the intended meaning of multimedia constructs. To remedy this, we propose a model for controlling accesses to SMIL documents by decorating them with appropriate RDF statements that respect these semantics. Using this model, we show how such documents can be fetched by secure runtimes from secure multimedia servers.

The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) [Aya01] is an W3C [W3C03] specification for authoring multimedia documents. Although SMIL has XML like syntactic constructs, unlike XML, SMIL compositions have an intended semantics stemming from intuitive notions of playing out many media streams relative to each other. Although there are many excellent models for XML access control [DdVPS00, DdVPS02, BCF01, BCFM00, SF02, KH00, GB02, KW02, GF03], they do not respect the intended meaning of multimedia constructs. To remedy this, we propose a model for controlling accesses to SMIL documents by decorating them with appropriate RDF statements that respect these semantics. Using this model, we show how such documents can be fetched by secure runtimes from secure multimedia servers.

We describe a new video interface based on a recorded personal navigation history which provides simple mechanisms to quickly find and watch previously viewed intervals, highlight segments of video the user found interesting and support other video tasks such as crowd-sourced video popularity measures and consumer-level video editing. Our novel history interface lets users find previously viewed intervals more quickly and provides a more enjoyable video navigation experience, as demonstrated by the study we performed. The user study tasked participants with viewing a pre-defined history of a subset of the video and answering questions about the video content: 83.9% of questions (average) were answered correctly using the personal navigation history, while 65.5% were answered using the state-of-art method; they took significantly less time to answer a question using our method. The full video navigation interface received an 82% average QUIS rating. The results show that our history interface can be an effective part of video players and browsers.

This work presents some considerations about the process of producing and the use of audio and video components in Web based courses. We discuss some aspects related to the infrastructure necessary to produce and deliver this material and we present some conclusions of our experience in producing our Web based courses using these elements.

Due to significant improvements in networking, providing multimedia presentations has become a real commercial issue and a technical challenge for Web TV, e-learning, commercial presentations. Hyperlink in HTML has been designed for hyperdocuments navigation, but the actual use of hyperlinks lacks of relevant features to play continuous media such as videos. The main two issues in using hyperlink and multimedia in a web context are: (a) Navigation and continuity of streamed hypermedia. In a multimedia presentation, when switching from one point to another, if the continuity of streamed media is required, then a video should not stop. (b) Adaptability of the presentation in response to the user's reaction. In our approach, we consider spatial regions whose positions can change according to the user's wishes, as well as spatial regions that can appear in the presentation and preserve the continuity of streamed media. This paper addresses these two issues by considering an object oriented vision of a multimedia presentation structure. We propose a new XML based language for multimedia presentations, called ARM. In this multimedia document format, we introduce the notions of spatial and temporal inheritance, and of overloading. Spatial inheritance together with overloading allows to keep the same spatial structure between two or more documents, or to change this spatial shape in response to the user's activity. Additionally, the temporal inheritance allows the continuity of streamed media even in the case of multiple hyperlinks (i.e., hyperlinks with more than one target).

The ability to easily find, edit and re-use content adds significant value to that content. When the content consists of complex, multimedia objects, both the difficulty of implementing such capabilities and the added-value are multiplied. The work described here is based on an archive of SMIL presentations, built and indexed using tools, developed by the authors, which enabled digitized videos of lectures to be automatically synchronized with their corresponding PowerPoint slides and recorded metadata about the lecture context, origin of the video and slide files and the temporal alignment information. As the archive grew, it became clear that the ability to edit, update or customize existing presentations by deleting, adding or replacing specific slides without re-filming the entire lecture was required. This paper describes an application that provides such functionality by enabling the easy editing, repurposing and tracking of presentations for web-based distance learning.

The demand for and expectation of ubiquitous access to multimedia online learning resources are much higher amongst computer science students than other fields of study. Previous systems providing internet access to digital video or audio recordings of lectures have been disappointing or ineffective as a learning experience or excessively complex and time-consuming from the educator's point of view. This paper describes a new approach to building an online presentation archive of lectures, based on a relatively new Recommendation from W3C called SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) . It describes a highly efficient and integrated system for capturing, indexing, searching and delivering online presentations without relying upon proprietary technology.

Abstract. The ability to easily find, edit and re-use content adds significant value to that content. When the content consists of complex, multimedia objects, both the difficulty of implementing such capabilities and the added-value are multiplied. The work described here is based ...

The most powerful promise information technology offers is its ability to capture knowledge so that it can be analyzed, reused, shared with others, and used to create new knowledge. The impact of just-right information flowing to the right place, person and time, cannot be overstated. Learning system realized by means of video learning objects corresponding to the goal of a system with such a conceptual model. Video learning object is our approach that enables encapsulation of sets of learning objects (data, slides, links) with corresponding video conferencing sessions. The video learning objects can be grouped in different hierarchy this allowing alternative learning pats. The video learning object system has the standard video portal interface.

This paper discusses streaming media for World Wide Web-based training (WBT). The first section addresses WBT in the 21st century, including the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) standard that allows multimedia content such as text, pictures, sound, and video to be synchronized for a coherent learning experience. The second section covers definitions, history, and current status. The third section presents SMIL as the best direction for WBT. The fourth section describes building a WBT module,using SMIL, including interface design, learning materials content design, and building the RealText[TM], RealPix [TM], and SMIL files. The fifth section addresses technological issues, including encoding content to RealNetworks formats, uploading files to stream server, and hardware requirements. The final section summarizes future directions. (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

Lecture videos captured in classrooms are an integrated part of e-learning. Effective learning with these videos remains a challenging task. We present VAM (Video and More), a tool which automatically creates hierarchical structured video sequences for e-learning and distance learning purposes. The innovative approach of this system is the automatic extraction of structure and annotations for later use as navigation support. The structural information is generated from the PowerPoint-slides used in the recorded presentation and is utilized to provide the learner with an elaborated, combined and enriched view of the material. The information for segmentation and synchronization of video, audio and slides are automatically stored during the recording session. The user can navigate either by choosing topics, slides, time or importance of different parts of the multimedia-presentation. The audio and video information is combined with hyperlinks and annotations of the presenter. Additionally the users can add and distribute their own annotations which are temporally bound to specific parts of the video. In this way the video sequences are not only randomly accessible and the important parts easily recognizable but they are enriched with additional information and the possibility of gathering further information if wanted or needed.

Lecture videos captured in classrooms are an integrated part of e-learning. Effective learning with these videos remains a challenging task. We present VAM (Video and More), a tool which automatically creates hierarchical structured video sequences for e-learning and distance learning purposes. The innovative approach of this system is the automatic extraction of structure and annotations for later use as navigation support. The structural information is generated from the PowerPoint-slides used in the recorded presentation and is utilized to provide the learner with an elaborated, combined and enriched view of the material. The information for segmentation and synchronization of video, audio and slides are automatically stored during the recording session. The user can navigate either by choosing topics, slides, time or importance of different parts of the multimedia-presentation. The audio and video information is combined with hyperlinks and annotations of the presenter. Addition...

The work of the Open Hypermedia Systems Working Group (OHSWG) has lead to the creation of several hypermedia models and a common protocol for Navigational Hypertext. However none of these include a working model of context. In this paper we present how we have extended the Fundamental Open Hypermedia Model (FOHM) to include context and behaviour. We then present Auld Leaky, a lightweight contextual link server that stores and serves structures represented in FOHM, using Context to filter query results.

Lately, videoconference applications have experienced an evolution towards the World Wide Web. New technologies have given browsers real-time communications capabilities. In this context, WebRTC aims to provide this functionality by following and defining standards. Being a new effort, WebRTC still lacks advanced videoconferencing services such as session recording, media mixing and adjusting to varying network conditions. This paper analyzes these challenges and proposes an architecture based on a traditional communications entity, the Multipoint Control Unit or MCU as a solution.

Traditional media, such as text, image, audio and video, have long been the main media resources and granted full support of standard desktop tools and applications. Interactive rich multimedia documents, adding resources such as video or synthetic animations and relying on complex synchronization among objects, are now making their entrance into the world as new multimedia formats emerge. In this context, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) is receiving more and more attention from content authors due to its fine property of multimedia synchronization and authoring interactivity for the content production. At the same time, MPEG-4 is designed to address the requirement of new generation of highly interactive multimedia applications, while simultaneously maintaining the support of traditional applications. MPEG-4 provides facilities (XMT and BIFS) to integrate and synchronize, spatially and temporally, many different media objects together. However, these facilities lack appropriate authoring tools to widen its audience and subsequently limit the application.

This paper presents a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) prototype tool called ACTS (Annotation Collaboration Tool via SMIL -Synchronized Multimedia Integrated Language), which was designed to meet the user requirements of a distributed, collaborative team performing remote analysis of robotic welds. Based on open standards such as W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) SMIL, ACTS provides a framework of temporal and spatial synchronization for multimedia data streams. An annotation facility provides for asynchronous collaboration among colleagues. ACTS uses the NISTdeveloped S2M2 [2] Java applet-based SMIL player that implements and extends the SMIL 1.0 specification. Future work is also discussed.

We describe a new video interface based on a recorded personal navigation history which provides simple mechanisms to quickly find and watch previously viewed intervals, highlight segments of video the user found interesting and support other video tasks such as crowd-sourced video popularity measures and consumer-level video editing. Our novel history interface lets users find previously viewed intervals more quickly and provides a more enjoyable video navigation experience, as demonstrated by the study we performed. The user study tasked participants with viewing a pre-defined history of a subset of the video and answering questions about the video content: 83.9% of questions (average) were answered correctly using the personal navigation history, while 65.5% were answered using the state-of-art method; they took significantly less time to answer a question using our method. The full video navigation interface received an 82% average QUIS rating. The results show that our history interface can be an effective part of video players and browsers.

We describe a new video interface based on a recorded personal navigation history which provides simple mechanisms to quickly find and watch previously viewed intervals, highlight segments of video the user found interesting and support other video tasks such as crowd-sourced video popularity measures and consumer-level video editing. Our novel history interface lets users find previously viewed intervals more quickly and provides a more enjoyable video navigation experience, as demonstrated by the study we performed. The user study tasked participants with viewing a pre-defined history of a subset of the video and answering questions about the video content: 83.9% of questions (average) were answered correctly using the personal navigation history, while 65.5% were answered using the state-of-art method; they took significantly less time to answer a question using our method. The full video navigation interface received an 82% average QUIS rating. The results show that our history interface can be an effective part of video players and browsers.

Lecture recording provides learning material for local and distance education. Screen recording offers a flexible technique for lecture recording as it allows to capture virtually any material displayed during a presentation. Unfortunately, the navigational features and search abilities are rather limited, because grabbing and storing pixel data deprives the structure and content of the source documents. This paper presents how analyses of such pixel based recordings deliver useful navigational indices and provide full-text search automatically. In order to establish these research results, we have (partly) implemented the ideas within our own screen recording environment called TeleTeachingTool.

Lecture recording provides learning material for local and distance education. Screen recording offers a flexible technique for lecture recording as it allows to capture virtually any material displayed during a presentation. Unfortunately, the navigational features and search abilities are rather limited, because grabbing and storing pixel data deprives the structure and content of the source documents. This paper presents how analyses of such pixel based recordings deliver useful navigational indices and provide full-text search automatically. In order to establish these research results, we have (partly) implemented the ideas within our own screen recording environment called TeleTeachingTool.

Online subtitle databases allow users to easily find subtitle documents in multiple languages for thousands of films and TV series episodes. However, getting the subtitle document that gives satisfactory synchronization on the first attempt is like hitting the jackpot. The truth is that this process often involves a lot of trial- and-error because multiple versions of subtitle documents have distinct synchronization references, given that they are targeted at variations of the same audiovisual content. Building on our previous efforts to address this problem, in this paper we formalize and validate a two-phase subtitle synchronization framework. The benefit over current approaches lays in the usage of audio fingerprint annotations generated from the base audio signal as second-level synchronization anchors. This way, we allow the media player to dynamically fix during playback the most common cases of subtitle synchronization misalignment that compromise users' watching experience. Results from our evaluation process indicate that our framework has minimal impact on existing subtitle documents and formats as well as on the playback performance.