Collaborative indexing, annotation and discussion of audiovisual content over high bandwidth networks
BrowseBrowse through existing online multimedia repositories using the embedded Internet Explorer Browser.
ViewView a wide variety of media formats such as MPEG-1, -2 and -4, WAV, MP3 and QTVR through embedded media players such as the Quicktime Player, Windows Media Player and Video Lan Client.
CompareView multiple media files simultaneously and compare a series of segments or frames from the same video or different videos.
AnnotateAnnotate the media files by highlighting regions and attaching personal notes, questions, remarks, links and relationships to other resources, terms from ontologies or controlled vocabularies, ratings and local files such as images, or PDF documents.
SecureSecure your personal notes and share them with trusted colleagues through XACML policies within a Shibboleth Federation.
SearchSearch, browse and analyse the annotation data to find relevant content.
CollaborateHold collaborative discussions (over VIC/RAT or Skype) about the content with distributed, remote peers from your contact list while Vannotea updates the view of the content in real-time using Jabber instant messaging.
RecordRecord discussions by capturing the audio and video streams and event logs.
PlayPlay back previously recorded discussions while Vannotea updates the view to show the content that was being discussed.
For more detail on Vannotea's features, consult the Vannotea User Guide.
Architecture


Technologies
Annotea:
A web-based annotation server developed by the W3C as part of the Semantic Web initiative which we have extended to support annotation of fine-grained contexts within multimedia objects.
Jabber:
This provides the instant messaging required for the real-time application sharing and event logging.
Shibboleth:
An Internet2 middleware initiative that enables identity management and secure access to Web resources shared amongst a federation of organizations.
Vic/rat
: These videoconferencing tools are extended to enable the recording of separate participant's H.261 streams and their conversion to tiles within a single MPEG movie.