VRT-medialab

The VRT-medialab has closed its doors end of December 2011. Five years ago the lab was established as a part of the VRT, Flanders’ public service broadcaster, to carry out technological research into the creation, management and distribution of media content. Its focus was on the Flemish media market, but VRT-medialab also pursued collaboration on a European and worldwide level. Because of changes in VRT’s management contract that came into effect at the beginning of 2012, the VRT-medialab has been split into two separate labs: a smaller one still within the VRT and one in the IBBT, the Interdisciplinary research institute for BroadBand Technology. The lab in the VRT will perform longer-term research, while the lab in the IBBT will carry out so called close to application projects for the whole Flemish media industry. In the course of December all of the VRT-medialab staff has made a choice between the two new labs.

GuidedChat is a game based on crowd-sourcing aimed at perfecting a language learner’s skills. The applied game mechanics are innovative as well as challenging. The teacher as well as other learners can monitor the learning progress through various game mechanics.

Check out the prototype of GuidedChat. The demonstrator can be found here.

NordicLight, a European project based on technology developed within the framework of the VRT-medialab project MediaLoep, was given green light. In September 2011 this basic technology was licenced out to spin-off Limecraft, who wil be leading the NordicLight project in cooperation with Wappa, Taglicht Media en Raindance.

During the next 36 months Limecraft and its partners will create a co-production platform for producers of audiovisual media. This platform will optimize the producer’s workflow by maximizing re-use of content and managing intellectual property.

While doing research for the project COSYN(2), several tools for creating, testing and debugging adaptive bitrate streaming files were developed. Thanks to these tools audio and video streams provided on the Internet can elegantly and dynamically be adapted to the users’ needs. Since these tools - a segmenting tool and a few parser scripts - might be useful for other people, we decided to open source them.

Most HTTP adaptive streaming protocols have the same basic construction. The audiovisual material is encoded multiple times, each with a different bitrate or quality. The resulting streams are chopped into pieces of approximately equal duration (typically somewhere between 2 and 10 seconds each). Each piece of each quality has its own URL and hence is individually accessible. With this information, the client can navigate through the different available qualities, usually starting with the lowest bitrate to assure a fast start. If the network, cpu, ... allows, the client can switch to higher bitrates.

The segmenting tool splits the input stream into multiple output files, according to Apple’s version of the adaptive streaming protocol (IETF-draft). The segmenter code compiles into four binaries, each using a different splitting algorithm: ByteCount, MP3, ADTS (AAC) and MpegtsH264. Apart from ByteCount, they all try to split every N seconds, keeping the file structure in mind: i.e. ADTS will cut on frame boundaries; MpegtsH264 will cut on GOP boundaries. The segmenting tool also supports Live-stream-mode and encryption. 

Furthermore a few parser scripts were developed which can be used to convert binary formats into “human” readable formats. It’s by no means an easy read, but these tools have saved us many hours of watching hexdumps.

The tools can be found on GitHub.

Thank you to everyone who joined the VRT-medialab sessions during the iMinds event! Your presence was heartwarming! Below you can read the report and review the presentations that were given during the afternoon sessions.

Innovation in file-based production
by Peter Defreyne

In the last few years the broadcast industry has made the transition to file-based workflows using IT-technology. As a response to today’s shortcomings, VRT-medialab has developed CHAMP, a flexible production platform which enables programme makers to produce a multi-platform story in an easy and efficient way. In his presentation Peter Defreyne looked at the achievements and future challenges.

Taming your media chaos
by Karel Braeckman

Managing and searching large media collections brings along plenty of difficulties. VRT-medialab is familiar with this problem, currently being involved in the project MediaLoep. In the past VRT-medialab also came across with the same theme in the projects PISA and MediaMap. During the past five years many different solutions were thus explored and it seems that manual annotations are not the only weapons against media chaos in broadcast facilities. Karel Braeckman showed how new tooling, crowd sourced metadata, feature analysis and the Semantic Web can render media collections more transparent.

The live streaming video of the presentations during the first session can be viewed here.

Pictures of our booth, the VRT-medialab sessions and the reception afterwards can be viewed below:

Beyond the red button: making second screen TV apps
by Hendrik Dacquin, Bert Wijnants, Kasper Jordaens & Ilja Strobbe

VillaSquare, one of the latest exploits of the VRT-medialab MediaCRM and MediaSquare teams, is a purpose-built platform for the popular live één-television programme “Villa Vanthilt”. This platform is in many ways a pioneering second screen project and has received numerous positive feedback. Four team members explained how the VillaSquare use case came into being and discussed the underlying technologies.

Does the Flemish viewer appreciate second screen experiences such as VillaSquare? Is he willing to use tablets and smartphones to make these experiences possible? VRT-medialab and VRT’s user research department have entrusted Synovate with a study on the interest of the Flemish consumer for these devices and the role they will play in the multi screen story. The study is only available in Dutch.

VillaCRM: a direct relationship between the broadcaster and its customers
by Mike Matton

Recent technological advancements have made it easier to build and maintain CRM systems for the media sector. These systems provide a method to build a direct relationship between the media (broadcast) company, and its customers: the viewers. During his presentation Mike Matton gave an overview of the results obtained from VillaSquare, the recent test case around the Villa Vanthilt show. He as well discussed the benefits and pitfalls of establishing a CRM relationship.

MediaSquare and the curious case of Villa Vanthilt
by Ike Picone, senior researcher SMIT

Did the Flemish viewer appreciate VillaSquare, the second screen platform that was launched especially for the één-programma Villa Vanthilt? Do they consider it a successful tool for interactive television and community-building? Ike Picone and his SMIT collegues have carried out a study on VillaSquare. The results suggest that differentiation towards specific target groups will be needed when further developing such services. The study is only available in Dutch and can be downloaded here. 

The live streaming video of the presentations during the second session can be viewed here.