The following aspects of video archiving environments will inevitably change as the result of moving to an all-digital environment. First, the widening horizon of the archive induces a perceived loss of accuracy. In the foreground, a larger part of the archive is more readily available. In the background, resulting from the increased connectivity in the world provided by internet, conflicts between the archival codes of archives that developed in isolation (e.g. thesauri, ontologies) will demand conversion and merging of coding systems. This will inevitably induce a perception of loss of accuracy in the user confronted with code systems different from those to which he or she is accustomed. Second, where one was already used to heterogeneity in data sources, computer- aided search will emphasize variety and integration of data types. The target content can be distinguished by type: visual (stills, photographs, graphics, logo), audio (speech, music, noise), and text (scripts, summaries, transcripts, reviews, letters, instructions, literature), and combined versions of these. As almost all subtypes can be combined with one another, the list of integrated information objects to be analyzed is beyond complete formalization, but will require awareness. Third, computer-aided systems will stimulate differentiation in search patterns. The new search facilities will be well outside the paradigm of key-word search. Interactive systems will allow faster response, leading to an earlier transition from well-posed questions to more open-ended browsing by the user. In addition to precise target search, the user will frequently conduct an open-ended browsing search and use different kinds of interaction and presentation techniques to view the result. Searching through larger and more heterogeneous, possibly remote, archives requires different search patterns including the acceptance of working with different code systems. Archives will be under pressure to provide better performance, however abstract the initial formulation of the search. Fourth, computer-aided archival systems will put pressure on the user's expectation. As we argue later on, there is no realistic possibility of achieving the same completeness and accuracy in the automatic annotation of an archive as in the manually generated counterpart. But that is precisely what the user will expect, since all information is 'in the computer'. The question is what to do with that expectation: to combat it, to compromise on accuracy, or to accept automation only when it delivers the same quality. The practice of use will change, and hence inevitably the practice of archiving. The good news is that there is still ample time to prepare for that change. If the frustration of archivists and users is to be avoided, there are some additional challenges ahead in the development of automatic systems: 1. There is the need to design and implement systems that fit a daily work process. Note: the fit with a daily process may seem to have no value, but experience in many other information systems application areas has frequently taught this lesson. 2. To that end, to deliver computerized archiving systems that are fast and accurate in their retrieval results. Note: for a computerized system, accuracy in the result is not necessarily the same as accuracy in the annotation. 3. And, to do so with robust methods for automatic understanding of non-ideal data. Note: experience with early systems has led to considerable cynicism and misunderstanding of the general applicability, due to the fact that systems have been tested for only a small set of perfect data. In our view, the practices of users and system designers, as well as of archivists, will change considerably before effective systems are introduced. Constituent elements of video archival systems The interpretation of multimedia requires attention from a wide variety of disciplines, currently usually operating separately. The analysis of visual information is studied in the areas of image processing and computer vision. The first of these has an emphasis on image in/image out processes, whereas computer vision studies the interpretation of static or dynamic scenes. As well as for speech recognition, audio signals are studied for music recognition. Natural language processing aims to deliver an interpretation of the content of a text. By the nature of the information it processes, natural language processing starts from semantically meaningful units, namely words. So, it is no surprise that understanding a multimedia object relies heavily on the success of the interpretation of the linguistic elements, either written or spoken. The latter requires detection of speech and conversion to text as an intermediate step, but still lends itself better to understanding than the visual part. Visual information is so rich in content and variety, even for one single object, that it appears difficult to deal with it using automatic analysis. As a consequence of the difference in progress in these fields, their practices are quite distinct. But whereas they have grown in separation for twenty or thirty years, current progress is fastest when based on interdisciplinary cooperation. Automatic interpretation of visual, audio, or textual information is greatly helped by detailed understanding of the content when the description is based on ontologies or other formal domain descriptions. Automatic interpretation is also supported if general background knowledge is available on things such as word combinations, pronunciation, faces, shouts, and their admissible variations, such as the morphological variants of words, the variety in visual appearances, and the variations in the background. CATALOGUS 98 ARNOLD W.M SMEULDERS, FRANCISKA DE JONG AND MARCEL WORRING MULTIMEDIA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE ANNOTATION OF VIDEO mroftnalicn visual auU o taxL Figure 2. TTiïïXïïaTs iiorlr ril product an carlcv: Irscbon interene I a lion Knowledge lerrral lea. Ting prc&cnuhcn ilftfriwjar on cxpcncrvitL. Systems cnrnpUt ng fbmats aartaüaxcs irtemel 99

Periodiekviewer Koninklijke Vereniging van Archivarissen

Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2005 | | pagina 51