ECHO - European Chronicles On-line

1. ECHO - European Chronicles On-line Pasquale SavinoI.E.I. - C.N.R.Via Alfieri, 1 - 56127 PisaE-mail: savino@iei.pi.cnr.ithttp://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/People/Savino.html ECHO Web-site: http://pc-erato2.iei.pi.cnr.it/echo/

2. Project Figures • Starting date: February 1, 2000 • Duration: 30 months • Total effort: 475.8 p/m ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

3. Project Objectives Make possible to access and search by content over the net, large and inter-operating audio visual archives. • Management of historical documentaries • Definition and adoption of an appropriate metadata format • Support of multiple languages • Integration of manual and automatic indexing • Creation of automatic video summaries • Validation through testbeds of documentary film archives ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

4. ECHO System Overview L i b r a r y C r e a t i o n L i b r a r y C r e a t i o n Offline L i b r a r y E x p l o r a t i o n L i b r a r y E x p l o r a t i o n Online Digital Compression Interactive Story Selection Speech User Request Image Natural Language Indexed Video Database Recognition Extraction Interpretation Segmented Indexed Compressed Segmentation Transcript Semantic-expansion Audio/Video Translation Requested Video Segment Indexed Video Database Video Metadata Segmented Indexed Compressed Transcript Audio/Video ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

5. The Partners Project coordination IEI-CNR (I) Content providers Istituto Luce (I) Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (F) Stichting Nederlands Audiovisueel Archief (NL) Memoriav (CH) ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

6. The Partners (cont.) Industrial partners Tecmath (D) Media Site (GR) Eurospider Information Technology (CH) Research institutions IEI-CNR (I) Istituto Trentino di Cultura (I) Centre National de la Recherce Scientifique (F) University of Mannheim (D) Carnegie Mellon University (USA) ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

7. Project Activities • User requirements collection and analysis • Content selection and preparation • Metadata format definition and acquisition • System architecture design and detailed specification • System development and test • System Evaluation • Field Trials ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

8. Partner’s roles User Requirements Content selection Field trials Speech Recognition Video Summaries System Architecture System Development Advanced indexing & search Content Providers Research Institutions Industrial Partners ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

9. Project Milestones • Phase 1 • Collection and analysis of user requirements • Collection analysis and selection • Film metadata model definition • System Functionality and Global Architecture Completed by September 2000 ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

10. Project Milestones • Phase 2 • Specification and development of ECHO first prototype • Automatic indexing of documentary films • Adaptation and integration of four speech recognition engines for mono-lingual content-based indexing and retrieval. Completed by April 2001 ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

11. Project Milestones • Phase 3 • Specification and development of the ECHO final prototype. • Metadata editor • Indexing of the complete ECHO collection • Retrieval based on audio transcripts and metadata • Interoperability of digital film collection. • Automatic film summary. Completed by December 2001 ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

12. Project Milestones • Phase 4 • Evaluation • Validation • Dissemination Completed by August 2002 ECHO – European CHronicles On Line

13. Some key technical issues • Metadata format • Interoperability • Integration of automatic and manual indexing • Automatic speech recognition of old documentary material • Cross Language Retrieval • Automatic abstracting • Image “understanding” for face, text and object recognition ECHO – European CHronicles On Line