Enterprise Ireland Funding

The Centre for Digital Video Processing has been awarded €451,782 under the Enterprise Ireland-funded Advanced Technology Research Programme 2002.

The objective of the project entitled "Linked Objects & Events for User-driven Video Retrieval" or L'OEUVRE is to produce one of the world's first MPEG-7 compliant digital media asset retrieval systems serving MPEG-4 encoded content which supports sophisticated content-based user interactions. The project will develop a new set of techniques for automatic indexing, browsing, searching and linking of Digital Video information. Based on automatic identification and tracking of objects appearing in video, this will enable a new type of interaction between people and large collections of video material - including following automatically-generated hyperlinks that will greatly improve access and retrieval of information from such video libraries. Two key components of this proposal are the use of the MPEG-4 standard for encoding and subsequent analysis of video material, and the use of the MPEG-7 standard for encoding the automatically derived description of video material.

One output of the project will be a fully-integrated fully-operational system capable of supporting multiple real-time users interfacing with digital media content using the next generation of content-based video navigation tools. This work will put the DCU Centre for Digital Video Processing at the forefront of digital media technology development worldwide, enhancing Ireland's reputation as a leader in this strategically important emerging field. The Centre for Digital Video Processing is a collaboration between DCU researchers from the School of Electronic Engineering (Sean Marlow, Noel Murphy, Noel O'Connor) and from the Alistair Sutherland, Wu Hai). The centre is built on a desire to find new and useful ways of working with Digital Video and Digital Media in general, for the benefit of our society - in Ireland and worldwide.

RINCE is one significant source of support for the Centre, providing lab space and equipment for one of the two labs in the Centre, and also assisting with administrative support and some research student salaries. Other sources of funding include Enterprise Ireland (Informatics 2000, RIF), EU (Marie Curie Fellowship Programme, COST 211, IST SCHEMA Network, DELOS Network) and the DCU Research Committee.