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

Jane Hunter, DSTC 
John Smith, IBM
Guus Schreiber, VU
Jeremy Carroll, HP 




OBJECTIVES

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



APPROACH

-	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

-	Review of existing tools for image annotation, image ontology collections,
and use cases for image annotation

(end of September 2005)


-	Feasibility report on the interoperability between SW and image annotation
standards (including patent and copyright issues) and best practices
for SW interoperable image annotations including possible mapping tools

(end of November 2005)



LINK TO DRAFTS

- http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jrvosse/swbpd/images/


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.
 
 

IMPORTANT NOTE

If the charter of the SWBPD WG is renewed through into 2006,
then the TF hopes to continue with an updated description that mainly extends
the above work into video formats.




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