Development, Annotation and Protection of Digital Archive “Bulgarian Folklore Heritage”

The key to prosperity in today's world is access to digital content and skills to create new content. Investigations of folklore artifacts is the topic of this article, presenting research related to the national program „Knowledge Technologies for Creation of Digital Presentation and Significant Repositories of Folklore Heritage” (FolkKnow). FolkKnow aims to build a digital multimedia archive "Bulgarian Folklore Heritage” (BFH) and virtual information portal with folk media library of digitized multimedia objects from a selected collection of the fund of Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum (IEFSEM) of the Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS). The realization of the project FolkKnow gives opportunity for wide social applications of the multimedia collections, for the purposes of Interactive distance learning/self-learning, research activities in the field of Bulgarian traditional culture and for the cultural and ethno-tourism. We study, analyze and implement techniques and methods for digitization of multimedia objects and their annotation. In the paper are discussed specifics approaches used to building and protect a digital archive with multimedia content. Tasks can be systematized in the following guidelines: * Digitization of the selected samples * Analysis of the objects in order to determine the metadata of selected artifacts from selected collections and problem areas * Digital multimedia archive * Socially-oriented applications and virtual exhibitions artery * Frequency dictionary tool for texts with folklore themes * A method of modern technologies of protecting intellectual property and copyrights on digital content developed for use in digital exposures.

Digital Libraries and Portals Saving National Cultural Heritage (IMI–BAS Experience)

The current research activities of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI—BAS) include the study and application of knowledge-based methods for the creation, integration and development of multimedia digital libraries with applications in cultural heritage. This report presents IMI-BAS’s developments at the digital library management systems and portals, i.e. the Bulgarian Iconographical Digital Library, the Bulgarian Folklore Digital Library and the Bulgarian Folklore Artery, etc. developed during the several national and international projects: - "Digital Libraries with Multimedia Content and its Application in Bulgarian Cultural Heritage" (contract 8/21.07.2005 between the IMI–BAS, and the State Agency for Information Technologies and Communications; - FP6/IST/P-027451 PROJECT LOGOS "Knowledge-on-Demand for Ubiquitous Learning", EU FP6, IST, Priority 2.4.13 "Strengthening the Integration of the ICT research effort in an Enlarged Europe" - NSF project D-002-189 SINUS "Semantic Technologies for Web Services and Technology Enhanced Learning". - NSF project IO-03-03/2006 ―Development of Digital Libraries and Information Portal with Virtual Exposition "Bulgarian Folklore Heritage". The presented prototypes aims to provide flexible and effective access to the multimedia presentation of the cultural heritage artefacts and collections, maintaining different forms and format of the digitized information content and rich functionality for interaction. The developments are a result of long- standing interests and work in the technological developments in information systems, knowledge processing and content management systems. The current research activities aims at creating innovative solutions for assembling multimedia digital libraries for collaborative use in specific cultural heritage context, maintaining their semantic interoperability and creating new services for dynamic aggregation of their resources, access improvement, personification, intelligent curation of content, and content protection. The investigations are directed towards the development of distributed tools for aggregating heterogeneous content and ensuring semantic compatibility with the European digital library EUROPEANA, thus providing possibilities for pan- European access to rich digitalised collections of Bulgarian cultural heritage.

Discover the Thracians - An Approach for Use of 2D and 3D Technologies for Digitization of Cultural Heritage in the Field of E-learning

Information and communication technologies (ICT) offer an easier access to and a multi-perspective view of cultural heritage artifacts and may also enrich and improve cultural heritage education through the adoption of innovative learning/teaching methods. This paper examines the different practices and opportunities for digitization of cultural artifacts with historical significance and describes the work on a pilot project concerning the development of e-learning materials in the Thracian cultural and historical heritage. The proposed method presents an approach based on a combination of 2D and 3D technologies to facilitate the overall process of digitization of individual objects. This approach not only provides greater opportunities for presenting the Thracian heritage but also new perspectives for studying it - students, scientists, PhD students will have the opportunity to work with the materials without having access to them.

Message from MultiCom-2012 workshop chairs

Welcome to the Second International Workshop on Multimedia Communications and Networking held in conjunction with IUCC-2012 during 25 June – 27 June 2012 in Liverpool, UK. MultiCom-2012 is dedicated to address the challenges in the areas of elivering multimedia content using modern communication and networking techniques. The multimedia & networking computing domain emerges from the integration of multimedia content such as audio and video with content distribution technologies. This workshop aims to cover contributions in both design and analysis aspects in the context of multimedia, wired/wireless/heterogeneous networks, and quality evaluation. It also intends to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to share their latest achievements in this field with others and establish new collaborations for future developments. All papers received are peer reviewed by three members of the Technical Programme Committee. The papers are assessed by their originality, technical quality, presentation and relevance to the theme of the workshop. Based on the criteria set, four papers have been accepted for presentation at the workshop and will appear in the IUCC conference proceedings. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the IUCC-2012 Organizing Committee, the TPC members of MultiCom-2012 and the authors for their s upport, dedicated work and contributions. Finally, we look forward to meeting you at the workshop in Liverpool.

DESARROLLO DE APLICACIÓN MÓVIL DE REALIDAD AUMENTADA PARA INSTITUCIONES EDUCATIVAS.

El propósito de esta investigación es el desarrollo de una aplicación que pueda instalarse y utilizarse en dispositivos móviles, tales como celulares o tablets, mediante la cual los usuarios tendrán acceso inmediato a contenidos multimedia que brindarán información complementaria a los materiales de estudio presentados en carreras de grado, tecnicaturas, diplomaturas y cursos. Dicho programa tendrá la capacidad de escanear e interpretar un patrón de Realidad Aumentada ubicado en materiales impresos permitiendo la reproducción de vídeos, archivos de audio y gráficos en 3D, entre otros usos. Este desarrollo, utilizado como recurso didáctico para la enseñanza, enriquecerá la experiencia del alumno durante el momento de estudio ya que le permitirá integrar realidad y virtualidad de manera inmediata generando una interactividad con los contenidos que lo llevará a ser un participante activo del proceso de aprendizaje, lo que redundará en un aumento de la motivación y la eficacia de los materiales de estudio. The purpose of this research is to develop an application that can be installed and used on mobile devices such as phones or tablets, through which users will have immediate access to multimedia content that will provide additional information to study materials presented in racing degree, technical programs and courses. This program will have the ability to scan and interpret a pattern of augmented reality located in printed materials allowing playback of video, audio and 3D graphics, among other uses. This development, which is used as a teaching resource for teaching, enrich the student""s experience during the time of study as it will enable to integrate reality and virtuality immediately generate interactivity with the content that will be an active participant in the learning process, which will result in increased motivation and the effectiveness of the study materials.

Television and the Second Screen.

This book examines an emerging and fast evolving phenomena: that a growing number of people engage with two screens whilst watching television. It seems a simple concept – until we discover the important implications. In doing this, this book will move way beyond the study of online and multimedia content. It will go past the impact of mobile and multi-platform technology on the media. Instead it will examine how this new concept of second screen interactivity changes the way we watch, produce, commission and monetise television programmes in the UK.

Las ONG como agentes de transformación social. Del asistencialismo a la movilización

Este estudio de caso se centra en la campaña #dereitos365, desarrollada entre diciembre de 2014 y enero de 2015 en Galicia para reclamar una implicación ciudadana durante todo el año y no solo en la época navideña. Partiendo del potencial de las redes sociales e Internet y tomando este caso como referencia, el objetivo de la investigación es profundizar en el papel de las ONG como agentes de transformación social y como promotoras de un diálogo interactivo y multidireccional que implique a los nuevos ciudadanos. Los resultados muestran una campaña marcadamente institucional que busca la movilización y concienciación ciudadana para la construcción de una sociedad más justa y solidaria, generando visibilidad y cierta interactividad a través de mensajes reivindicativos, sobre todo por parte de organizaciones locales, y de un alto contenido multimedia.

Optimization of Pattern Matching Algorithms for Multi- and Many-Core Platforms

Image and video compression play a major role in the world today, allowing the storage and transmission of large multimedia content volumes. However, the processing of this information requires high computational resources, hence the improvement of the computational performance of these compression algorithms is very important. The Multidimensional Multiscale Parser (MMP) is a pattern-matching-based compression algorithm for multimedia contents, namely images, achieving high compression ratios, maintaining good image quality, Rodrigues et al. [2008]. However, in comparison with other existing algorithms, this algorithm takes some time to execute. Therefore, two parallel implementations for GPUs were proposed by Ribeiro [2016] and Silva [2015] in CUDA and OpenCL-GPU, respectively. In this dissertation, to complement the referred work, we propose two parallel versions that run the MMP algorithm in CPU: one resorting to OpenMP and another that converts the existing OpenCL-GPU into OpenCL-CPU. The proposed solutions are able to improve the computational performance of MMP by 3 and 2:7 , respectively. The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) is the most recent standard for compression of image and video. Its impressive compression performance, makes it a target for many adaptations, particularly for holoscopic image/video processing (or light field). Some of the proposed modifications to encode this new multimedia content are based on geometry-based disparity compensations (SS), developed by Conti et al. [2014], and a Geometric Transformations (GT) module, proposed by Monteiro et al. [2015]. These compression algorithms for holoscopic images based on HEVC present an implementation of specific search for similar micro-images that is more efficient than the one performed by HEVC, but its implementation is considerably slower than HEVC. In order to enable better execution times, we choose to use the OpenCL API as the GPU enabling language in order to increase the module performance. With its most costly setting, we are able to reduce the GT module execution time from 6.9 days to less then 4 hours, effectively attaining a speedup of 45 .

Detecting social patterns within 20th century documentary photos: a deep learning based approach

The job of a historian is to understand what happened in the past, resorting in many cases to written documents as a firsthand source of information. Text, however, does not amount to the only source of knowledge. Pictorial representations, in fact, have also accompanied the main events of the historical timeline. In particular, the opportunity of visually representing circumstances has bloomed since the invention of photography, with the possibility of capturing in real-time the occurrence of a specific events. Thanks to the widespread use of digital technologies (e.g. smartphones and digital cameras), networking capabilities and consequent availability of multimedia content, the academic and industrial research communities have developed artificial intelligence (AI) paradigms with the aim of inferring, transferring and creating new layers of information from images, videos, etc. Now, while AI communities are devoting much of their attention to analyze digital images, from an historical research standpoint more interesting results may be obtained analyzing analog images representing the pre-digital era. Within the aforementioned scenario, the aim of this work is to analyze a collection of analog documentary photographs, building upon state-of-the-art deep learning techniques. In particular, the analysis carried out in this thesis aims at producing two following results: (a) produce the date of an image, and, (b) recognizing its background socio-cultural context,as defined by a group of historical-sociological researchers. Given these premises, the contribution of this work amounts to: (i) the introduction of an historical dataset including images of “Family Album” among all the twentieth century, (ii) the introduction of a new classification task regarding the identification of the socio-cultural context of an image, (iii) the exploitation of different deep learning architectures to perform the image dating and the image socio-cultural context classification.

Content Classification of Multimedia Documents using Partitions of Low-Level Features

Audio-visual documents obtained from German TV news are classified according to the IPTC topic categorization scheme. To this end usual text classification techniques are adapted to speech, video, and non-speech audio. For each of the three modalities word analogues are generated: sequences of syllables for speech, “video words” based on low level color features (color moments, color correlogram and color wavelet), and “audio words” based on low-level spectral features (spectral envelope and spectral flatness) for non-speech audio. Such audio and video words provide a means to represent the different modalities in a uniform way. The frequencies of the word analogues represent audio-visual documents: the standard bag-of-words approach. Support vector machines are used for supervised classification in a 1 vs. n setting. Classification based on speech outperforms all other single modalities. Combining speech with non-speech audio improves classification. Classification is further improved by supplementing speech and non-speech audio with video words. Optimal F-scores range between 62% and 94% corresponding to 50% - 84% above chance. The optimal combination of modalities depends on the category to be recognized. The construction of audio and video words from low-level features provide a good basis for the integration of speech, non-speech audio and video.

A generalized multidimensional index structure for multimedia data to support content-based similarity searches in a collaborative search environment

Since multimedia data, such as images and videos, are way more expressive and informative than ordinary text-based data, people find it more attractive to communicate and express with them. Additionally, with the rising popularity of social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, multimedia information retrieval can no longer be considered a solitary task. Rather, people constantly collaborate with one another while searching and retrieving information. But the very cause of the popularity of multimedia data, the huge and different types of information a single data object can carry, makes their management a challenging task. Multimedia data is commonly represented as multidimensional feature vectors and carry high-level semantic information. These two characteristics make them very different from traditional alpha-numeric data. Thus, to try to manage them with frameworks and rationales designed for primitive alpha-numeric data, will be inefficient. An index structure is the backbone of any database management system. It has been seen that index structures present in existing relational database management frameworks cannot handle multimedia data effectively. Thus, in this dissertation, a generalized multidimensional index structure is proposed which accommodates the atypical multidimensional representation and the semantic information carried by different multimedia data seamlessly from within one single framework. Additionally, the dissertation investigates the evolving relationships among multimedia data in a collaborative environment and how such information can help to customize the design of the proposed index structure, when it is used to manage multimedia data in a shared environment. Extensive experiments were conducted to present the usability and better performance of the proposed framework over current state-of-art approaches.

B2B platform for media content personalisation

This paper proposes a novel business model to support media content personalisation: an agent-based business-to-business (B2B) brokerage platform for media content producer and distributor businesses. Distributors aim to provide viewers with a personalised content experience and producers wish to en-sure that their media objects are watched by as many targeted viewers as possible. In this scenario viewers and media objects (main programmes and candidate objects for insertion) have profiles and, in the case of main programme objects, are annotated with placeholders representing personalisation opportunities, i.e., locations for insertion of personalised media objects. The MultiMedia Brokerage (MMB) platform is a multiagent multilayered brokerage composed by agents that act as sellers and buyers of viewer stream timeslots and/or media objects on behalf of the registered businesses. These agents engage in negotiations to select the media objects that best match the current programme and viewer profiles.

Culturtainment - a new interactive entertainment genre: assessment of Cultural Heritage digital content in leisure software games

European Master in Multimedia and Audiovisual Administration

Bitocast: a hybrid BitTorrent and IP Multicast content distribution solution

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Informática, pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia