Workshop Aims

New intuitive concepts to deal with audio-visual content are needed for next - generation video editing applications. Hence the development of concepts and prototype applications are currently a growing research area. This research includes innovative concepts for organizing and managing digital content as well as new kinds of manipulating video content. Besides, also new concepts for annotating digital contents are needed.

This workshop aims to focus on the exchange of relevant trends, missing features in current applications as well as future visions in the domain of video editing, annotation and publishing.

New Concepts in the VIZARD Project

The VIZARD project is an R&D project partially funded by the EC. The consortium is comprised of 8 partners originating from 5 different EC countries. Amongst them are three research partners and a commercial company: FH Joanneum (FH-Degree Programme Information Design), JOANNEUM RESEARCH (Institute of Information Systems and Information Management), TU Berlin (Prozess Rechnerverbund Zentrale) and 4VDO (Sistemas e Serviços Multimédia) responsible for carrying out the research within the VIZARD project.

The innovative R&D within the VIZARD project includes providing the user with a new intuitive concept to deal with video content. The software supports users who want to create a sketch or a story. Rather than be constrained by having to follow simple timeline representations as currently commercially available digital video editing systems provide, editors are able to manipulate graphically the structure of digital videos. This new kind of manipulating movies is based on the "Video Book" paradigm, which actually allows a user to edit digital videos similar to editing text documents with a word processor. More details on this innovative concept can be found in the public deliverable "VIZARD Bible" which is available for download on the public VIZARD website.

Another innovative point is the "annotation concept" of VIZARD based on "Video Lenses", realized in the VAnnotator module of VIZARD. This tool uses the concept of video lenses for providing different views on the materials being annotated. There are lenses for viewing and adding textual annotations and lenses that allow viewing the result of image processing algorithms such as cut detection. The tool follows a timeline paradigm, where each track can have several annotations. All the annotation data is based on the MPEG-7 standard and the output format is also compatible with MPEG-7.

In the area of "content indexing and video asset management" the research is concentrated on innovative concepts for organizing and managing digital content, which can collaborate with the annotation and the publishing component. The respective module is the VExplorer, a comprehensive "video collection search, organization and management" tool for organizing local content. It will allow also to pre-structure material in a repository. This will be realized by so called "logical views" on the local archive on any kind of data (e.g. video, audio, text, images, programs, etc.). These views can be customized as hierarchically structure-able collections representing temporal orders. Next to this the VExplorer enables the user to draft a story or a sketch by selecting and structuring material.

Discussion Sessions on Topics

Around the above mentioned areas - but not limited exclusively to them - we want to propose the following topics for the workshop:

• Content Visualization (audio and video)
  
• Content Indexing and Video Asset Management
  
• Methods for Collaborative Editing and Annotating Digital Videos
  
• Editing Interfaces (time-line, storyboard)
  

General Information

The workshop will be hosted by the University of Applied Sciences - Degree Programme Information Design in Graz / Austria. Graz is located in the southern part of Austria and can easily be reached by aircraft, by train (IC) and highway (Autobahn).

Workshop Program Committee

Gwendal Auffret, Forum des Images, Paris/France

Heimo Müller, FH Joanneum (Department of Information Design), Graz/Austria

Herwig Rehatschek, JOANNEUM RESEARCH (Institute of Information Systems and Information Management), Graz/Austria

Klaus Rebensburg, TU Berlin (Prozess Rechnerverbund Zentrale), Berlin/Germany

Ed Tan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Faculteit der Letteren, Amsterdam/The Netherlands

Nuno Correia, Nuno Correia, New University of Lisbon and 4VDO, Lisboa/Portugal