Sound and Vision: Behind the scenes
Within the program bureau Images for the Future, Sound and Vision has established a Research and Innovation division which endeavors to make digital audiovisual heritage available by using new concepts and techniques. The research projects are generally financed by the European Commission. Images for the Future and Sound and Vision provide the other budgets themselves. At the moment Sound and Vision participates in a variety of national and European research projects, of which Johan Oomen is the project manager. Seems like a good time for an interview. (photo: Joost Bataille)You are probably not the only one at Sound and Vision who deals with European Projects?
“One of our nicest projects is Video Active, a sort of European ‘Uitzendinggemist’ (Post broadcast television on demand) with historic television material. Four of us work on the content selection, the clearing of rights and the writing of articles. At Sound and Vision seven people work on the research projects. But within Video Active, for example, we collaborate with seventeen partners. So, a lot of people are set to work. And this is only one of many projects!”
Do you collaborate with other European archives?
“Video Active unites eleven archives. And in June we submitted a proposal to the European Commission to expand to twenty archives within eighteen countries. So you create a project that brings people and establishments together who normally wouldn’t combine their material.”
With which parties does Sound and Vision collaborate in the field of research?
“In the Netherlands with different universities (UT, VU and the UvA). The VU (Free University) generally occupies itself with web standards and knowledge engineering. With the UvA (University of Amsterdam) we do research in the field of text retrieval and video analysis. We try to find out how one can automatically search through objects in visual material
that no one has described. The Human Media Interaction group at the University of Utrecht investigates how one can automatically generate transcripts (subtitles) and extract metadata from these transcripts. With Knowledgeland we work together within the projects P2P-Fusion and Communia. We also have an extensive network of academic partners outside of the Netherlands.”What is the relevance of these European projects for Images for the Future?
“All European projects are concerned with making digital heritage available. How to make this process more efficient, how to combine collections. The knowledge we acquire, will eventually also flow back into the iMMix-platform that Images for the Future uses. So, if Sound and Vision will introduce voice recognition, for example, the Filmmuseum can use this for the indexation of their content as well.”
How far along are the projects?
“The bèta version of Video Active is finished, made by Noterik. One can search on terms and subsequently keep on filtering. The metadata are of high quality because they have been added by documentalists. On the first of October, videoactive.eu goes online and visitors can make use of this search engine. Other projects are more focused on research. MultiMATCH, for instance, in which we work on a multilingual search engine for heritage, which is able to translate search questions and search results. This research is still in its infancy, and therefore, the project produces working demo’s, but does not produce an integrated system.”
What are the key players in Europe in the field of research within the framework of digital heritage?
“The French INA is very active in European research projects. And also the BBC, who work mostly in the field of peer-to-peer and digital durability. Furthermore, the Austrian ORF and the Italian RAI have divisions which participate in research programs. Sound and Vision has previously collaborated with these four archives on the project PrestoSpace. Within PrestoSpace a technique was developed to make the digitization of analogue carriers more efficient. The three-year project PrestoPRIME was launched at the beginning of 2008. In this project the collaboration continues.”
Do you collaborate with the United States?
“There are international projects that are partially financed by the European Commission and partially by the National Science Foundation in the United States. Research foundations communicate with each other anyway, build upon each others results and exchange intelligent algorithms. TRECVID is a good example. If one wants to compare systems, one needs a standard dataset and a standard body of questions. TRECVID delivers this body in the field of video-annotation. Most interestingly, Sound and Vision provided a part of the collection to the project and the research results are being used around the world.”
Can you tell us more about Europeana?
“Europe is building a European digital library: Europeana. This library has to become the most important center for European heritage. The material can originate from libraries, museums and archives. The idea is that everyone uses certain standards of description, exchange and quality of the digital files, so that one interface can be built. There will be one central search entrance, even though the material is spread out over different locations. For Video Active we are already using these standards, so we’re ready for Europeana. The Rijksmuseum and the Royal Library, for instance, are also already prepared for Europeana.” What role do the Netherlands play in “the bigger picture”?
“The projects bureau that is designing Europeana is located in the Royal Library in The Hague, and Images for the Future is the largest digitization project in Europe. So, apparently, the Netherlands has a good climate for these ambitious projects. Other countries are envious of the Netherlands in this regard. Even the United States are jealous because such an ambitious collaboration in the field of digital heritage is unique in the world. The U.S.A. has Archive.org and the Open Knowledge Foundation, but they use standards which are much less open. Europeana is leading the way on these standards.”
Do you believe in a worldwide version of Europeana?
“Europeana has a few years to prove itself and to become connected with an adequate amount of organizations. We can see how hard it is to establish a shared infrastructure within the Netherlands. It will also be hard to do so on a European level… such a great amount of totally different communities (archives, libraries and museums) that have never before collaborated, makes it difficult to realize this project. For instance, libraries do have Worldcat.org, and UNESCO is doing a few things, but nothing on the scale of Europeana. The interoperability between the various collections from the various sectors in the various countries is of utmost importance. Political willingness, and (consequently) the possibility for subsidies, are certainly present.”
What are the most important innovations await Images for the Future?
“At short notice that would be voice recognition and solutions for connecting thesauri of different heritage parties. And of course the connection with Europeana. In the long run we have high expectations for image recognition: computers will be able to recognize concepts such as ‘house’, ‘car’ or ‘airport’. With the KRO (amongst others) we are also investigating the possibilities of utilizing the knowledge of end users to generate metadata. Also the use of finger printing to link a shot to the original ‘rushes’ is a promising line of research.
Another interesting question is: how can one offer material to people that they were not initially looking for? For this idea we have submitted the project proposal View2Tell to the European Commission. In this project we take a look at how we can do recommendations based upon visual traits. People enter a search question and receive not only the image results, but also recommendations that are related to the visual aspects of the images.”
What exactly is Open Images, a collaboration of Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland?
“We want to make part of the collection of Sound an Vision available online, so that people can create new fun things with it: the first real audiovisual remix project in the Netherlands. Its goal is to give people an active role. Open content is still in its infancy in Europe. Archives do not exactly know how to deal with it and often reason as such: ‘if we give away our precious content for free, others can make money with it, and what about us?”
Is this reasoning justified?
“Well, the BBC has examined that only 5 percent of their archive material is commercially exploitable. This means that one can offer the copyright free part of the remaining 95 percent as open content without any commercial drawbacks. Through Open Images we can investigate how these models work in the Netherlands.”
What excites you the most about all the projects you are involved in?
“In one way or another, the most exciting things are happening in the Netherlands. The fact that we have a chance to join forces due to these ‘umbrella projects’. Through Images for the Future we can also deliver a lot of content and show consumers and colleague-establishments appealing examples. And what is really great, is that we are going to succeed in this, because we have the means for it in the Netherlands!”
Click here for a list of all the international projects of Sound and Vision
