Audiovisual Archive

Stores video audio and image media and metadata while provides search tools to access contents in-house or on the web. Provides professional metadata processing methods, making content searchable in a complex way.

The system is integrated with a user edited thesaurus name space to maintain the keywords used at material archiving, while provides powerful tools to process media contents.

Multilingual solution. The thesaurus or wordlist fields can be searched and displayed in any number of languages.

Features

Server-client architecture. Server components are based on Microsoft SQL Server to store metadata contents and maintain business logic.
Media (video, audio, image) processing exploits Microsoft Windows standard subsystems (DirectX, GDI) providing compatibility and easy handling.
Audio and video processing is maintained at media-part (segment) level. Metadata sheets are attached to media segments using the segmenter module of the system.
Frame accurate video (and audio) processing. Time is maintained in time code (HH:MM:SS:FF) format.
Navigation in media is helped by various tools including audio envelope (generated by background process).
Microsoft Office compatibility. Export and import functions are based on the usual Office tools.

Metadata system

Metadata system uses innovative features to allow high level, realistic cataloguing.
Thesaurus data fields: Field values are selected from the user edited thesaurus. These thesaurus references provide additional search features such as search on synonyms or collective terms.
Special date format: Allows usage of intervals and incomplete dates (i.e. year only, month only, seasons, etc.).
Multi value data fields: In many cases multiple keywords are appropriate for describing document properties. Our system allows multiple values in thesaurus or wordlist fields.
Text fields contain simple text of rtf formatted documents. Searching of these is based on the full-text indexing service.
Multi-lingual features: Thesaurus and wordlists are maintained in multiple languages which allow multi-lingual search and presentation of metadata.

The thesaurus name space

Thesaurus is a hierarchical structure of keywords maintained by the catalogists themselves. Main characteristics:
Descriptor: The official name of the abstract (term). One descriptor is allowed in each language. Mandatory in the base language.
Synonyms: Terms can be described by other names, typically synonyms. A term can have any number of synonyms in any number of languages. Search functions can also use synonyms.
Horizontal relations: Terms can have relations with any number of other thesaurus terms. These references can be used to extend search result sets.
Multi-hierarchy: Terms can appear at several branches of the thesaurus tree therefore cataloguing and search functions can be performed in multiple thematic ways.