1. 1/13 Multimedia on the Semantic Web Jacco van Ossenbruggen Multimedia and Human-Computer Interaction (INS2) CWI Amsterdam

2. 2/13 Talk overview Three generations Web content Requirements: –second & third generation multimedia Demo CWI’s Cuypers engine –realising second generation multimedia Future directions –towards third generation multimedia: a media-friendly Semantic Web

3. 3/13 The Web in three generations 1.Hand-coded (HTML) Web content –easy access through uniform interface –huge authoring and maintenance effort –hard to deal with dynamically changing content 2.Automated on-the fly content generation –based on templates filled with database content –later extended with XML document transformations 3.Automated processing of content –The Semantic Web

4. 4/13 Who’s afraid of the Semantic Web? It is not about “blue sky” researchers trying to model the entire world… Instead, the Semantic Web: –proposes explicit meta-data instead of “screen scraping” –by using agreed upon semantics (ontologies) –building on proven Web technology (XML, RDF, OIL) Lot of current activity: –W3C Semantic Web Activity (RDF, WebONT) –OntoWeb (EU funded, > 80 partners, including CWI) –DAML (huge DARPA funded project)

5. 5/13 …back to multimedia Real multimedia Web content is still rare –Mostly bells & whistles to enhance HTML text … –… or mono-media AV-streams Virtually all presentations are hand-authored –proprietary formats that are hard to generate –limited support for dynamic content and multichanneling –most Web technology is text/page-oriented … –… with SMIL as one of the few exceptions Conclusion : Multimedia has hardly caught up with the 1 st generation Web

6. 6/13 Example scenario User is interested in Rembrandt and wants to know about the “chiaroscuro” technique System responds with textual explanation of the technique and a number of example images of its application in Rembrandt’s paintings

7. 7/13 Need for 2 nd generation multimedia Adapt to end-user’s platform capabilities –multichanneling: PC, PDA, mobile, voice-only,... Adapt to the network resources available –bandwidth and other quality of service parameters Personalization –language, abilities, level of expertise,.. Problem: current 2 nd generation Web tools do not work for multimedia

8. 8/13 Cuypers multimedia generation engine

9. 9/13 Cuypers multimedia generation engine Demo time Acknowledgements: –Demonstrator developed in the context of the ToKeN2000 project –Media database used with permission, courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

10. 10/13 Cuypers multimedia generation engine Demo time The bad news: currently all our design knowledge is: implicit and hidden in the generation rules lost in the generated Web presentation not reusable for other Web applications/sites

11. 11/13 Potential Knowledge Sources Semantic Web

12. 12/13 Conclusions Multimedia is still mostly first generation –hand-authored presentations –common Web-tools are too text-centric CWI’s Cuypers system realises second generation –on-the-fly multimedia generation –media-centric transformations Third generation is topic of our current research –generating annotated multimedia –reusing knowledge available on the Semantic Web

13. 13/13 Take home message Multimedia on the Semantic Web: Semantic Web: next generation of the Web Multimedia aspects still needs lot of work Thanks for your attention