Audio and Video

Chris McConnell

Department of Radio-TV-Film

November 30, 2006

Overview• Structured vs. Unstructured Data• The Big Challenge• Problems with Audio• Some Audio Solutions• Problems with Video• Some Video Solutions• Conclusion

Structured vs. Unstructured Data

• Data management folks often talk about two kinds of data in the enterprise.

• Structured data has a format that is enforced through software.

• Unstructured data is not easily understood by computers.

Structured Data

• Structured data is contained in a way that makes it easy for computers to index and search

• The short answer is that structured data is in a database.

• Things like XML files lie in a sort of gray area between structured and unstructured.

Unstructured Data

• Unstructured data is just about anything else that doesn’t have a predictable structure.

• Text documents (email, HTML, Word0

• Images

• Audio

• Video

Unfortunately, it gets more complicated

• It’s useful to break out this category in a few different ways.

• Text vs. “bitmap” data

• Text can be read by crawlers, discovery packages, etc.

• Good IA should make text easier to understand for automated tools.

Bitmap Data

• Bitmap data represents images, audio, or video as a series of numbers that represent each slice of a file.

• Darn near impossible for computers to extract meaning from the content itself.

• Many vector-based data types like Illustrator, Flash, MIDI, and maybe PDF suffer from a similar problem.

Metadata• Some bitmap data formats like mp3

offer the ability to add metadata that provides more context or structure for the content.

• However, video files provide operational meta data, but, if there’s space for metadata about the content, it’s rarely used, making video an even greater IA challenge.

Some Audio Problems

• Even if mp3s have metadata that reveal title, artist, and other information, this information is rarely used on the Web.

• Web browsers do not display this information.

• Web pages rarely provide context in an useful way.

Case Study: Slumber Party

• Pitchfork record review site allows users to click through directly to mp3s on record label sites.

• When mp3 is playing, users have little idea what they’re listening to.

• The record label has an even worse IA situation…

More Audio Problems

• To keep users from downloading mp3s, many labels and mainstream publications use Flash or Javascript players.

• These players are often oft-the-shelf solutions, which do not display IDv3 tags.

• Example: XXL

Some Solutions

• Use embedding to make an mp3 playable within a page, with appropriate labels.

• An mp3 download link can be provided for downloading or users with older browsers.

• Working with Flash, add context to the Flash file.

• Example: Warners Bros. Flaming Lips site.• However, it is difficult to provide a URI for

embedded content.

Embedding mp3s

• This allows you to create contextual text that describes the file.

• In addition, it creates a URI for a contextual page for the song.

<EMBED src="file.mp3" autostart=true>

Problems with Video

• As with mp3s, many video files play in a browser window with little additional context. Example.

• Video is often difficult to describe or label, especially if it’s so-called “viral video”

Medium-Specific Video Problems

• Time-based media are difficult to scan or “scrub” for particular content.

• Search engines cannot index video content, unless transcripts are provided on an HTML page.

• Users may not have the patience to get to the good stuff.

Tagging Solutions

• Tagging allows users to create descriptive labels for video. Example: YouTube

• YouTube’s tagging system still does not allow users to identify interesting content inside the video.

• “Deep Tagging” allows users to mark and label points in the video. Example: MotionBox

References

• Weglarz, Geoffrey. “Two Worlds of Data – Unstructured and Structured,” DM Review September 2004.

• “Add Voice to your Site: The html EMBED Tag” Access from http://www.world-voices.com/resources/addaud.html

• “Deep Tagging and the Embeddable Motionbox Player” Motionbox Blog. September 13, 2006.