Steven GoldfarbCHEP

Mumbai, India - 15 Feb 2006

The Web Lecture Archive Project:

Archiving Lectures for HEP

Mumbai, India - 15 Feb 2006 S. Goldfarb - University of Michigan WLAP - Slide 2

Partnership University of Michigan

• UM ATLAS Collaboratory Project• Department of Physics• Media Union

CERN• Technical & Acedemic Training• Summer Student Program• IT

American Physical Society

Primary Goals implement an electronic archival system for slide-based

presentations on the Internet; assess the ability of the system to improve upon and complement

existing archival methods; determine the resources required to install and maintain the

system as a standard archival service.

The Web Lecture Archive Project

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Pilot Project (1999) Bring Sync-O-Matic 3000 to CERN

• CERN Summer Student Lectures• LHC Meetings, Seminars, Tutorials

Great Success with Students• Especially for early morning lectures…

Sparked Interest at CERN, LHC• Academic, Technical Training• ATLAS Management

Early Discovery Years (2000-2001) CERN Training

• First Attempts at Production Mode Need for Tools, Methods, Automation

• First ideas of Lecture Object, Standardization CERN Auditorium

• First Steps Toward Electronic Archival, Equipment for Video Streaming Ann Arbor

• Emphasis on Addressing LHC Activities Archival of Plenary Sessions, Tutorials

Project History

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Recent Activity (2002-2006) Most R&D Moved to Ann Arbor

• Lack of CERN Support for General R&D Standardization

• Definition of Lecture Object Standard Description of Media, Slides, Metadata

• Porting of Repository to Lecture Object• Creation of Transformations to Build, View Lecture Objects

Automation• Motivated by Larger Scale Production of Lectures at University• Web Lecture Capture Device Project

Automation of lecture construction from audio, video, slides Automation of publication (immediate web upload following talk) Automation of video capture Robotic Camera

Project History (cont.)

Mumbai, India - 15 Feb 2006 S. Goldfarb - University of Michigan WLAP - Slide 5

Web Lecture Components

What is a Web Lecture?

metadata

slides, visual material (screen captures, e.g.)

timing information

audio of speaker, audience

video of speaker,audience

Software to prepare the material for presentation in a web browser, with standard plug-ins.

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Most Common Web Lectures

What is a Web Lecture?

Seminar or Plenary Session Audio, Video Slides Immediate Publication Short or Long Lifetime

Tutorial Audio, Video Slides, Screen Captures, White Board Capture Additional FAQ, Problems, Recipes, etc. Labor-Intensive Production (Delay before Publication) Typically Long Lifetime

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WLAP Archives University of Michigan Portal

http://www.wlap.org• Current, maintained, more than 700 web lectures published

CERN Portalhttp://webcast.cern.ch/Projects/WebLectureArchive/• Original WLAP portal at CERN, no longer maintained actively (being re-thought)

CERN Training CDS Agenda Server

http://agenda.cern.ch/displayLevel.php?fid=72 (academic training)http://agenda.cern.ch/displayLevel.php?fid=97 (summer student lecture program)• CDS Agenda server (video only, with mixing of slides / speaker)

The Rest of the World Google: "web lecture" OR "electronic lecture”

• 57,000 entries (only a few percent actually point to web lectures) Some premium examples

• http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/ (video only - but awesome content)• http://itunes.stanford.edu/ (Stanford on iTunes)• http://www.mediasite.com/ (MediaSite - excellent!)

What’s Out There?

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Lecture Object Standardize Storage of Web Lecture Ingredients, Recipe

• Archive media in standard formats (mpeg-4, jpeg, etc.)• XML extension to SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)

Describes slide timing, media location, other information SMIL = W3C Standard

• Add metadata with RDF (Resource Description Framework) RDF = W3C Standard

Standard Procedure for WLAP

Current Research Focus

mpeg-4

jpeg

XMLDescription

meta data

Lecture Object

Transform

ations

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Web Lecture Capture Device (Automating the Process for Large-Scale Recording) Obstacles to Fast Automatic Lecture Recording & Publishing

• Video Capture & Compression• Slide Capture & Compression• Timing & Metadata Capture & Inclusion

Manpower Costs• Video Recording• Processing of Data to Create Lecture Object

WLCD Solutions• Video captured by IR sensing robotic camera

IR light-emitting necklace for speaker Two cameras: one follows necklace movements, tells other where to look Video signal encoded and compressed in real time to mpeg-4

• Slide capture directly from presentation computer VGA signal taken by splitting signal to projector Synchronization based on time-dependent changes to signal Non-changing video compressed to fixed images

• Lecture Object generated from input Metadata extracted automatically from slides with OCR (audio eventually) Published directly at end of lecture

Current Research Focus (cont.)

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Mumbai, India - 15 Feb 2006 S. Goldfarb - University of Michigan WLAP - Slide 11

WLAP Focus for R&D Issues of greatest relevance to HEP, Education

Automation WLCD, Robotic Camera

Standardization Move to Standard Lecture Object

• Non-Proprietary, Long Lifetime, Adaptable to New Technology Discussions Begun with CERN

• New SMAC Project Based on SMIL

Integration Live Web Lectures a Must

• H.239 Now Standard on Most H.323 Video Conferencing Units Dual Video Streams

• Capture and Build Lecture Objects on the Fly

Adaptability, Proliferation Lectures Everywhere

• Maintained, Mirrored Web Repositories• Viewing with PDA’s, iPods, Phones, …

Future Directions

Thank you!