Myers, Brad Carnegie Mellon University $150,000 - 12 mos.
Using the Informedia Digital Video Library to Author Multimedia Material
This is the first year funding of a three year continuing award. This project will create a comprehensive Intelligent Video Editor that will allow people without special training to author interesting compositions using digital video. In particular, the editor will support sophisticated interactive behaviors for the videos and for extra graphical drawings (called synthetic graphics) layered on top of the videos. For example, users might specify which objects in the video can be clicked on to choose the next video clip, or that an arrow should be drawn that shows the path that an object will follow, or that the video is part of a lesson and a viewer's answer to a question determines the next action. There will also be high-level facilities for searching and organizing videos, video editing, demonstrating behaviors, writing scripts in a more natural programming language, and testing and debugging the code. The tools created will be continuously tested with school children and adults to evaluate and refine the various features. The goal is to make it as easy to use the video material found in a digital library as it is to use textual material found in today's libraries.
