Tag Archive for 'tagging'

Towards Open and Dynamic Archives

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seth.keen
on October 3, 2008
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The ‘Towards Open and Dynamic Archives‘ is project that Stoffel Debuysere.

The traditional functioning of audiovisual archives is being completely reshaped by today’s technological advancements. The expansion of fast broadband networks and the availability of software, hardware and recording equipment have broken down the barriers to the production and distribution of audiovisual content. Large quantities of multimedia materials are flowing on the Internet and into the archives every day, and all over the world ambitious projects are set up to digitalise heritage collections. Moreover, media start to look more collective and inclusive: the ubiquitous “Web 2.0″ discourse promises new levels of participatory culture in which all users are producers, sharing, appropriating and remixing content, overcoming the old regime of top-down broadcast media. Blogs, wikis, social networks and “user-generated-content” tools are presented as the new wave of voluntary alliances that users seek online. Even the traditional media are swept away into the hype: the BBC designated 2005 as the “Year of the Digital Citizen”, in 2006 Time magazine chose “You” as the as its esteemed Person of the Year.

XML notes for VD

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seth.keen
on August 6, 2008
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What did I pick up from the XML Melbourne Lab feedback?

The VD system was described as a “taxonomy of display.” A “recombinant video player.” There was confusion “Is it a content engine or a tag engine? Could we provide clearer context.

Another called it “Anti-TV…the opposite of YouTube…not a lot in the house” and an example that contradicts all the noise on the Internet through its slowness and stripped back minimal design.

Multi-window viewing

The ability for a number of people in different locations to see varying news perspectives at the same time. The multi-window composition creates the opportunity for multiple perspectives to be viewed at the same time. The viewer can make their own judgments on that news item by engaging across a number of perspectives concurrently.

Also, there is the potential to respond to the concept of multi-tasking. Why aren’t there more systems that allow users to view multiple clips at the same time as a way of searching and deciding what they want to watch? Makes sense speeds up consumption. I think people are ready for this type of viewing but we are still locked into the security of one window viewing due to established cinematic and TV paradigms.

In a multi-window format with data increased a combination of stills and video could be used where photojournalistic type images come to life for short periods with audio overlays. An example www.mediastorm.org.

Overall, the multi-window aspect is what made the VD system unique. In comparsion, tagging is something that is growing fast around online video content.

Live streaming

Of course sport also came up. The slow cricket match playing in the left hand screen while other sports stream through other windows. Activities like sports can easily be watched at the same time as viewers wait for highlights the goal to be scored etc. The Olympics to die for in this system. Delayed edited broadcast another option, along with multi-camera curation except you see all the cameras. This tied in with live VJ gigs and music concerts.

References – jw media player; long tail video; bits on the run; mogulus live broadcast; yahoo live; ustream.tv

Granularity - Semantic Video

Following up the idea of fragmenting existing TV programs for web publication the www.abc.net.au/fourcorners TV documentary program provides excerpts with duration times for viewers to access independently. But there seems to be a far as I can tell, no extras like out takes, extended interviews and other background. Also, the material seems to rely on previous program viewing with little focus on taxonomy, classifying under themes and categories.

A viewing platform with thumbnail similarities www.piclens.com a type of fly through viewing image-videowall but the clips remain separate as discrete independent pieces of content.

In a fast moving environment where time is of essence one person argued that time should not be invested in classification - taxonomy of online video content. The approach should be UGC instead where users make their own folksonomy type choices. An example is the vmark system. Here the idea is to leave long duration recordings and let users break the material up into whatever fragments they choose, with the option to embed and share those portions with themselves and others. (I need to try it out to confirm this perception) A Korean example of vmark - http://zzim.kbs.co.kr/section/ . A key objective is to get return traffic back to the original source material using metadata.

Discussions on UCG tagging and machine-enabled automatic tagging on the fly also led to the sphinx-4 and a research project happening at University Wollongong as part of the Smart research group.

But, the concept of the content producer avoiding having to classify video content manually misses the point in relation to VD. Because the idea is to construct specific relationships between text and moving-imagery as way to provide certain types of context for the viewer/user.

UGC content

A UGC idea where individuals capture material around Australai on the premise of classification rather than editing. These are single shots (no edits) but there could be jump cuts in camera, which are categorised and tagged. An approach that ties in easily with amateur online production techniques to shoot and publish directly online. (via a computer or direct from mobile etc) i.e. qik Many amateur producers struggle with more advanced editing but are becoming familiar with tagging and folksonomy practices. There could be themes where the content that is uploaded is synidcated into one central VD system for display under specific categories (themes that have been worked out in advance).

Re-mix is another consideration, particulary across multiple windows. Not only are users open to remix there own version (a standard single-window video) but also users could remix across multiple windows. It becomes more like a DJ turntable combining audio and vision from multiple sources at the same time.

Added social networking functions

How could the VD player become a type of widget that allows a webpage to include other social networking functions like the example www.netvibes.com —about:

Netvibes lets individuals assemble their favorite widgets, websites, blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, and everything else they enjoy on the web - all in one place.

Some people loved the simplicity of the player (as it contradicted the visual overload of most web pages and players). Others where dying to get stuff back in there where the video component is supported with components that develop and maintain community. I discussed this earlier when comparing the motives behind Showinabox and how we stripped most of the web 2.0 blog functionalities out. View2gether is an example of a “social viewing platform” and freebase.

Returning to single window output

There was a number of people who wanted to be able to take away a traditional single edited video clip from the system as an option. This got me thinking about the divide we have created between the VD system and standard viewing practices. LIke creative commons currently considers the established status quo of traditional copyright until things move toward a more open approach. Maybe there is something in providing an additional single-window option. But a part of me also says NO, make the leap.

other reference - limelight networks

Sphinx-4 (open source)

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seth.keen
on August 5, 2008
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This application Sphinx-4 came up in discussions about tagging and annotating video content on the fly.

Sphinx-4 is a state-of-the-art speech recognition system written entirely in the JavaTM programming language. It was created via a joint collaboration between the Sphinx group at Carnegie Mellon University, Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), and Hewlett Packard (HP), with contributions from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

American Fim Institute (online video players)

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seth.keen
on August 4, 2008
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In the XMedia lab Nick Di Martino from The American Fim Institute (AFI) was first to demonstrate his wares, which included presenting a number of projects that are about to be released. He was quick to point out that “online video is exploding”.

Research funds seemed to be directed at very elaborate complex online video players. These players are attempting to integrate as many aspects of social media as possible into the interface. Another key issues is attracting users/viewers by optimising searching. Martino like many others in the conference stated that it is not worth trying to compete with meta-platforms like YouTube. The idea they argue is to distribute your content as far and wide as possible and look for follow-up or return traffic, along with channel partnerships with bigger platforms.

Martino demonstrated beta versions of the following AFI projects:

AFI Screen nation

An issue for the AFI is working out how to integrate User Generated Content (UGC) with high-end production content and overall it is about balancing “scale, usability, uniqueness, ubiquity…” In this player UCG content is clearly delineated from professional production material. Later in the conference others spoke about creating an even approach to both forms of content where both are integrated and given the same sort of respect and hierarchy.

This player had elaborate ‘tag feed’ drop downs and a ‘tag manager’ that enabled users to add and manage their own tags. There was also a video cloud (a video egg) that used image thumbnails in a type of tag cloud structure. A ‘molecule’ feature worked like a VJ type application where molecules are connected in a hypertext type structure. These are portable like a widget and can be transferred to mobile hardware. Down the side was a community feed which acted as a forum for users.

A note worth thinking about in relation to thinking about chapters and tagging is planning linear content in advance so that it can be fragmented and classified.

AFI Digital Content Lab
Filmocracy - PBS

Nic mentioned a semantic web type approach: Freebase about:

Freebase, created by Metaweb Technologies, is an open database of the world’s information. It’s built by the community and for the community – free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites.

Already, Freebase covers millions of topics in hundreds of categories. Drawing from large open data sets like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and the SEC archives, it contains structured information on many popular topics, including movies, music, people and locations – all reconciled and freely available via an open API.

tag cloud interface

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seth.keen
on May 5, 2008
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All this got me thinking about a design where categories are tags becoming a simple tag cloud like in the archives section.

The tags on the left and right become clip titles instead loosing a level. Categories are wiped. Categories in this interface are like making a batch or set in Flickr. The user selects content instead using the tag cloud directly.

repeated posts

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seth.keen
on May 5, 2008
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I have got most of the clips into the ‘Glasshouse Birdman’ prototype and are now starting to look at how the categories and tags work in terms of how I would like the user to engage with the themes that have emerged in the content. I realised that clips could be kept in separate categories by controlling cross-overs with tag names, but sometimes a clip has something to offer in other categories. For example, giving a clip a tag name that features strongly in another category brings all those clips from that category across with it into the original category that has been selected. Often from my perspective this makes the theme to random if this is not the desired effect. One way around this within this interface design is to post the same clip twice with the same title but in a different category and with a different tag name.

category = birdman; tag = animal lover; clip title = big brown snake

category = feeding; tag = aviary; clip title = big brown snake

This means clips can be repeated to appear elsewhere while still having some control over themes. In a hidden kind of way clips that seemed more important that others could be repeated to appear in a number of places. Repetition becomes a feature of the narrative structure.

thumb candy - blog based documentary

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seth.keen
on April 22, 2008
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Chris let me know recently about a online documentary that he made titled ‘Thumb Candy’ on SMS text culture in the Philipphines that he put together within a blog. He gives Videodefunct a plug on the More about the project page as being an influence on using tagging and a blog to classify the video content.

thumbcandy.jpg

Video Vortex video documentation

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seth.keen
on March 27, 2008
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The Video Vortex video documentation is now online. Ogg Theora files are also available for download.

tagging differences

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seth.keen
on March 26, 2008
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I have been looking around at tagging and noticed that the ABC online use a specific style of tagging. An example ‘government-and-politics’. They sometimes use 2-3-4 word tags. This style of tagging seems to be referred to as a multi-word tag on the microformats wiki, which are done in varying ways and supported by different social media websites.

Examples of variations (world-politics world_politics world+politics world.politics WorldPolitics) delicious as far as I can tell supports all of these combinations, what microformats calls combined tags (from delicious):

The only limitation on tags is that they must not include spaces. So if your web page is about a two-word place like “San Francisco”, you may want to tag it as sf, san-francisco, SanFrancisco, san.francisco, or whatever else makes sense to you. You probably don’t want to use commas, though, since a comma will be become part of the tag.

On the videoblogging mail list David Meade in the post ‘[videoblogging] tagging posts in wordpress question’ notices some issues with WordPress where wordpress replaces a + with a dash. All pointing to a lack of consistency across tagging. ABC categorises these stories under the following”:

Every one of our stories includes metadata on things like subjects, locations, importance and genre.

abc_tagcloud2.jpg

videodefunct notes

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seth.keen
on February 6, 2008
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ped_stepblog1.jpg

In thinking about developing some content and a major project in the videodefunct CMS, I made the following notes. The planned idea is to produce a larger-scale documentary type work in the system.

I now see this as possibly being multi-layered with multiple perspectives from the self-reflexive through to user-generated AV content. The benefit of the system compared to a television/cinema documentary edit is that the material that is valuable but often discarded can be included, which follows along the line of the hypertext projects being developed in Networked Media. This means varying layers can be included like self-reflexive notes on the process and the subject for example. User-generated content could be another layer in addition to planned coverage.

In contrast to the television/cinema documentary-factual approach this online system is very flexible where it can be adapted to work with content in an unscripted, non-linear way. This means AV content can be recorded in the field with very little planning as the scripting so to speak is done afterwards in the process of classification. Also, existing archives have the potential to be translated into a type of online documentary-factual form that responds to that content specifically.

This notion of a classification process rather than a conventional edit is interesting where the preparation of each individual clip/shot in pedestrian for example is like the logging process in preparing for an edit. Each shot is trimmed with an in and out point named (given a title), put in a category and then tagged. In the logging of shots the editor or assistant works out a way to name the shots in relation to planned scenes; when the footage was recorded or other idiosyncratic classifying system than can be used to help the main edit. The conventional main edit in a way, happens in the actual videodefunct player where the metadata that is added to each shot, along with how the player is configured influences the way the shots are brought together by the user. Actually editing a sequence within a clip (like in The Drunken Truth) creates yet another obvious layer ripe for exploration.

In Banter I was influenced by the neato plug-in Tag Managing Thing. This plug-in is used to tidy up tags afterwards where for example a tag that only features once may be folded into a tag name that is represented a number of times on varying clips. In terms of respecting the way tagging works I am not fully convinced that is appropriate to re-work the tagging process afterwards. But, I did find it useful to look at the tags and categories in the player as away to see how the individual clips worked as a whole. I actually skipped the plug-in and ended up re-working the tags, categories and titles manually. This was because the actual content together presented ideas I had not seen in the posting - tagging process. These ideas I was interested in bringing out with an eye on more content being added into the discussion. In a way this process has connections with a conventional TV/cinema edit where focus on a particular subject is nurtured and developed. By rearranging the metadata which is how the video content is classified the work overall is taken in a particular direction for the viewer.