PRIMAVERA in the media
TV channels daily transmit programs that contain a huge amount of audiovisual information in the form of text, images, and video. In order to support these programs, an equivalently big amount of archived information is required as well. This information constitutes a tremendous quantity of data that have to be managed in a way that should be user friendly for the personnel, cost and time effective for the channel and finally, attractively presentable to the customer. The Personalized Retrieval and Indexing of Media Assets in Virtual Environments for Real-time Access (PRIMAVERA) research project focused on building a distributed Content Management System for broadcast applications capable of storing large amounts of video. The development of the system was based on three well-developed technologies: innovative audio/video processing, information retrieval techniques and advanced software architectures for distributed services. Each of these technologies gifted the system with significant characteristics. The first two techniques offer the capability for the development of advanced analysis and indexing methods for audiovisual content. These methods support efficient querying and searching in the media repository, and exploration of the archive content. The third technology was used in order for the system to be easily accessed remotely, user friendly and usable. The system could be accessed with a standard web browser providing the familiar web based user interface enriched with advanced 3D information visualisation, so that elements of the result can be easily presented, explored and analysed. Since efficient information management is required in an extensive range of companies, the system could be useful not only for TV channels and news agencies, but also for any organisation that stores and manages audiovisual data such as advertising companies, national security companies and so on.
