Nagao K. Digital Content Annotation and Transcoding

Artech House, 2003. — 258 p. — (Artech House Digital Audio and Video Library). — ISBN10: 158053337X, ISBN13: 978-1580533379.Today digital content is no longer limited to exclusive people. In addition to World Wide Web pages, which are the epitome of digital content, there are many more familiar examples such as i-mode for cell phones, photographs taken by digital cameras, movies captured by digital camcoders, compact discs, music clips downloaded from the Internet, and digital broadcasting. Audiences do not have to care if content is digital or not; however, whether they are produced digitally or not means a great deal.
Digitization has made it easier for us to duplicate these products, and as a result, information remains stable. In short, digitization has facilitated the storage of information.
Information storage, however, is not the only advantage of digitization. It is more important to recognize that manipulation (like editing) has become automatic to some degree. This is not to say that information was unable to be stored and edited at all before. Long ago, for instance, some could change the information on a paper, such as a Buddhist scripture, into another form, such as inscription on a stone. In modern times, some painters imitate paintings and add their own originality, and even some ordinary people record TV programs to edit to extract their favorite scenes and reproduce their own programs.
Digital content enables more because it is programmable to manipulate information. Suppose a person consistently records a favorite program. Its first 15 minutes is boring, but the person wants to see the opening. So the person has to record the whole program, from the beginning to the end. If the structure of the TV program is the same, it should be possible to automatically extract the unwanted first 15 minutes by programming. In another example, it would be difficult to extract a specific part from printed material that contains more than one million pages; it would be very easy, however, to extract the necessary part with a program for extracting topics whose content is digitized.
Thus, digital content has largely changed the way of dealing with information. This book describes some experiments of further developing digital content to make it possible for people to customize and enjoy it more interestingly.
This book focuses on two technologies: transcoding and annotation. Transcoding is a technology to program the transformation of digital content. This enables content to be changed to the most preferable form for audiences. Annotation is a technology that provides additional information to extend content so as to facilitate the programming. Annotation can also play the role of hyperlink, which connects several on-line resources.
The purpose of this book is not only to introduce these two technologies precisely but to propose the system that integrates these two and to prospect the future directions.
I have great expectations for the future technology of digital content for I believe that the digital content produced by a number of folks can motivate people to better understand both themselves and world events so that society at large will change for the better. I also believe that it is the principal responsibility for researchers to produce a technology that maximizes the utilization of the digital content. It might be outrageous to intend to change social systems; however, on the condition that these technologies can facilitate the voluntary actions of many people and can turn them to the right direction, people will come to notice the nature of the issue. As a result, these technologies will put the things that may at first seem impossible into practice.Introduction: Survival in Information Deluge.
Transcoding: A Technique to Transform Digital Content.
Annotation: A Technique to Extend Digital Content.
Semantic Annotation and Transcoding: Towards Semantically Sharable Digital Content.
Future Directions of Digital Content Technology.