Various issues, questions, suggestions

[paulusm]

Hi

I have just got Advene 0.40 installed on Ubuntu 10.04, for a project I'm working on requiring video annotation. I've got a few queries about things that don't seem to work properly and how to do things that aren't clear from the help.

I should add that it's great what you have done with this tool, particularly on cross-platform availability, and hope that this input will help in further improvements:

1) Export to mpeg7 - doesn't seem to work, I just get an empty file and the export dialog doesn't close or give any feedback.
2) Web browser - doesn't seem to work, I get a 404 like the server isn't started
3) Tags - I can't get the "bag of tags" to remember any, and any tags added to annotations don't seem to be exported.
4) Tags - Is there a way to import a set of tags (e.g. a controlled vocabulary) to use for annotation?
4) Global metadata - how can I apply some metadata to the whole clip rather than any particular shot - eg. who shot the film, where & when etc?

Thanks a lot for any help.

[oaubert]

Hello

Here are some answers. I hope it clarifies things, do not hesitate to ask for further explanations.

>1) Export to mpeg7 - doesn't seem to work, I just get an empty file and the export dialog doesn't close or give any feedback.
Indeed, the filter view was bogus. I have just fixed it in the svn. To get a quick fix, you can replace the /usr/share/advene/exporters.xml file by the new version downloaded from http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/advene/trunk ... iew=markup

> 2) Web browser - doesn't seem to work, I get a 404 like the server isn't started
If you get a 404 message, then the server is started (and you can reach it), since a 404 error message is generated by the server. What URL are you trying to reach?

> 3) Tags - I can't get the "bag of tags" to remember any, and any tags added to annotations don't seem to be exported.
Tag support is rudimentary and not much used at the moment. Suggestions are welcome. I have just added a "Display all tags" method to the "bag of tags" view, that will display all defined tags.

> 4) Tags - Is there a way to import a set of tags (e.g. a controlled vocabulary) to use for annotation?
For the moment, the most common practice is to store the data in the annotation content, and take advantage of the automatic completion: when you edit an annotation, completions will be proposed based on the words appearing in the other annotations of the same type. However, this does not solve the initialisation of the vocabulary, apart from defining a dummy annotation with all words. We recently had this request, and are planning to implement it soon (either as annotation-type metadata, or through a special resource file).

> 5) Global metadata - how can I apply some metadata to the whole clip rather than any particular shot - eg. who shot the film, where & when etc?
Given that in the current Advene, a package relates to only 1 clip, global metadata should be stored as package metadata. The API allows to store any metadata, however the GUI does not implement a generic metadata edition form. I add this to the TODO list.

Regards,
Olivier

[paulusm]

Oliver

Thanks a lot for the speedy reply! I replaced the exporters.xml as you suggested and the MPEG-7 export now works fine.

I'll get back to you on the others when I have time to test, but it's great that you are thinking about addition of structured metadata. I think once this and the global metadata can be added, this tool will be really useful to us. Our project is looking at annotation of ethnographic video, and we need to tool for researchers to use, and that will generate a dataset useful for flexible retrieval and re-presentation. We are also looking at Frameline, but Advene has the advantages of being open and cross platform.

Cheers

Paul