4. Tools

TO BE DONE: Provide intro to tool section and discussing and explaining the Categorization of important tools [by Nikolaos & Giorgos]:

Currently there are many tools that are used for multimedia annotation; the aim of this section is to give a brief description of the main tools characteristics in order to provide guidelines for their proper use. A basic characteristic is the types of content that a tool can annotate which are mainly images and in the case of M-Ontomat annotizer videos as well. Continuing another important characteristic of the annotation tools is the type of metadata they use. The main types of metadata are structural, descriptive and administrative. Structural metadata comment on the structure of the image and by some tools this operation is made automatically based on low level operations that are made on the image. Administrative metadata on the other hand include information concerning the creator the date etc and finally descriptive metadata comment on the content of the image. The format of metadata is also a characteristic of the annotation tools and the most common formats are OWL and  RDF. Additional characteristics of the annotation tools concern the type of annotation. Hence some tools give the opportunity to the user to annotate an image using ontologies while others allow free annotation. Granularity is another such characteristic that specifies whether annotation is segment based or file based. Additionally a tool may be threaded or unthreaded. By threaded meaning the ability to respond or add to a previous annotation and to stagger/structure the presentation of annotations to reflect this. Ending additional tools characteristics are the access they provide their operation mode and whether they are open source or not.

Concluding the appropriateness of a tool depends on the type of annotation a user requires.  The most used annotation tools were categorized according to the characteristics described and also were used for different types of annotations (according to the use cases) for a discussion on the individual tools see Semantic Web Image Annotation Tools .

      1) Type of content: Jpeg Images,Video etc
2) Type of metadata: Descriptive, administrative, structural etc
3) Format of metadata: OWL, RDF
4) Annotation Level: Extraction of visual characteristics and
association with domain ontology concepts-operation using
ontologies.
5) Operation mode: plug-in, stand-alone
6) Open source: YES, NO
Suggestions by Jane:
7) Collaborative or individual
8) Granularity - file-based or segment-based (and sub-categories of types of segmentation)
9) Threaded or unthreaded (By threaded I mean the ability to
respond or add to a previous annotation and to stagger/structure
the presentation of annotations to reflect this.)
10) Access controlled or open access

See Semantic Web Image Annotation Tools for a discussion on the individual tools.