TEMPLATE Task Force Description

NAME	Multimedia Annotation on the Semantic Web (MM)

STATUS:	Draft/Considered

COORDINATORS:

Giorgos Stamou, NTUA
Jacco van Ossenbruggen, CWI
Jeff Pan, UoM

MEMBERS


Possible Core Task Force Members:
 
?	Jane Hunter, DSTC 
?	John Smith, IBM
?	Guus Schreiber, VU
?	?, HP 




OBJECTIVES

(1) short-term objectives (December 2005): 

-	Investigate potential approaches for image annotation 
strategies that combine and/or integrate the SemWeb languages 
approach (RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Rule Languages, …) with the 
DDL/XMLSchema-based approach of MPEG-7, Dublin Core etc in an
interoperable way.

-	Develop best practice guidelines for image annotators that want
to export their annotations on the Semantic Web and/or import SemWeb data
into their image annotation tools.

-	Collect currently used vocabularies for multimedia annotations 
(like Dublin Core, VRA, …)

-	Provide use cases with examples of multimedia annotations using the 
above vocabularies

-	Investigate existing tools and other formats (ID3, EXIF, XMP, 
etc)

-	Align with other Task Forces of the BPWG and W3C activities
(Voice browser activities, synchronised multimedia etc)
 

(2) longer-term objectives (December 2006):

-	Investigate potential approaches for video annotation 
strategies that combine and/or integrate the SemWeb languages 
approach (RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Rule Languages, …) with the 
DDL/XMLSchema-based approach of MPEG-7 in an interoperable way.

-	Develop best practice guidelines for video annotators that want
to export their annotations on the Semantic Web and/or import SemWeb data
into their video annotation tools.

-	Provide readily applicable mapping tools (using XSLT, SPARQL, 
transformation rules, mappings etc)


APPROACH

(For the short-term approach, the first four steps are followed for the still
images case, while for the long-term approach, all the five steps are followed
for the video case) 

-	Compare issues discussed and approaches suggested in literature, 
including those in the bibliography. Collect existing approaches 
for MPEG-7 (and other multimedia standards) and Semantic Web interoperability.

-	Investigate current and upcoming European projects (aceMedia, Muscle, 
K-Space, …), US and Australian projects, ontology libraries, demos etc, for 
vocabularies of multimedia annotations, use cases, existing tools etc. 

-	Define the appropriate use cases, including (but not limited to) 
the areas of e-culture, medicine, personal and professional 
audiovisual archiving and management.

-	Using the above framework and focusing on the interoperability issues,
try to define best practices and guidelines for multimedia annotators
exporting their result in the SW.

-	Using the above guidelines, try to develop transformation tools from
multimedia annotations to SemWeb languages. 




SCOPE

In scope: make the SemWeb, ISO and other multimedia technologies interoperable.

Out of scope: development of new standards.  


DELIVERABLES

Short-term (until December 2005):

-	Review of existing tools for image annotation, image ontology collections,
and use cases for image annotation
-	Feasibility report on the interoperability between SW and image annotation
standards (including patent and copyright issues) and best practices
for SW interoperable image annotations

Longer-term (until December 2005):

-	Review of existing tools for video annotation, video ontology collections	
and use cases for video annotation
-	Best Practices for SW interoperable multimedia annotations
-	Mapping tools (using XSLT, SPARQL, transformation rules, mappings etc)
for multimedia annotations


LINK TO DRAFTS
- None yet


TARGET AUDIENCE & USE CASES
-	Professionals (museums, libraries, audiovisual archives, media 
production and broadcast industry, image and video banks) and 
non-professional (end-users) multimedia annotators.
-	Institutions and organizations with research and standardization 
activities in the area of multimedia.


DEPENDENCIES (if any)
- Other TFs: The approaches/guidelines of this TF need to be aligned 
with the WordNet, Applications and Demos TFs.
- Other W3C groups: activities on accessibility, voice browser activities,
synchronised multimedia group.
  

RELEVANT LITERATURE/REQUIRED READING

Stamou, G., and S. Kollias eds, “Multimedia Content and the Semantic 
Web: Methods, Standards and Tools”, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005.

Jane Hunter.  Adding Multimedia to the Semantic Web --- Building an 
MPEG-7 Ontology.  In: International Semantic Web Working Symposium 
(SWWS) Stanford University, California, USA July 30 - August 1, 2001.  
Available at http://www.semanticweb.org/SWWS/program/full/paper59.pdf

Raphael Troncy.  Integrating Structure and Semantics into Audio-visual 
Documents.  In: The Semantic Web - ISWC 2003 Sanibel Island, Florida, 
USA pp. 566 - 581 Springer-Verlag Heidelberg, October 20-23, 2003.  
Available at 
http://www.springerlink.com/media/6cc6l524yndvyn5jte27/Contributions/U/
3/T/X/U3TXQY8BR03TE7RG.pdf

Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Frank Nack, and Lynda Hardman/ That Obscure 
Object of Desire: Multimedia Metadata on the Web (Part I) /In:/ IEEE 
Multimedia 11(4), pp. 38-48 October -- December 2004

Frank Nack, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, and Lynda Hardman/ That Obscure 
Object of Desire: Multimedia Metadata on the Web (Part II) /In:/ IEEE 
Multimedia 12(1), pp. 54-63 January -- March 2005