MX Traveler

Video Search..the next target? (Blinkx Signs Microsoft Pact)

videosearch,video,blinkx,microsoft

This got little attention due to the Google/You Tube deal but Microsoft signed a deal with video search startup Blinkx to license their technology for some of it's MSN and Live properties.

Video search is a different beast. This is not about applying the same text search algorithms to the textual semantics on video content ( whether metadata, tagging, user comments ) but image and video retrieval that enables multimedia content indexing on a semantic level. It’s really, really hard stuff to do but researchers have been working on it for years. I expect the next 5 to 10 years this will be the area where the money ( from Google/Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL ) will be.

Link: Web Video Search Site Blinkx Signs Microsoft Pact - News by InformationWeek.
Link: ACM Multimedia 2006.
Link: ACM International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval, July 9-11 2007.
Link: TREC Video Retrieval  Evaluation

Nelly Moser Open Source Tender

This just came in last night through the OSFlash and Red5 mailinglists. A company called Struktur AG based in Germany put out a tender for an Open Source implementation of the Nellymoser Asao codec that is used in the Flash Player. They pay up to $6000 for a succesfull implementation. According to Nico Gulden, who sent out the email:

"The idea is comparable with the Google Summer of Code. LiSoG wants toconnect skill, ideas and money to support the development of certain features in Open Source Software. The Linux Solutions Group e.V. (LiSoG) is an association founded in March 2005 with the goal to promote linux based business. With its
business orientation and its cross-national approach it has an unique
position in the German-speaking area."

Obviously, legal questions arise, but Niels Mache from Struktur replies on the mailinglist:

"...the question addresses potential license issues or copyright/patent infringements. Struktur as the principal of the open source implementation of the codec will be fully responsible for potential legal issues. The contractor will be exempted from legal responsibility.
It may be uncommon to implement a proprietary algorithm as open source but it is not in reality. There are many examples of proprietary (and patented) software with co-existing, OS software equivalents. Some examples are DES, DSA(?), GIF, JPEG, MPEG-1/2/4, MP3, Quicktime etc.

Please note our situation in Europe. Algorithms can not be patented by the
patent law in Europe. This is also the (current) legal situation with software.
OS implementations of proprietary "whatsoever software applications" are just
normal. However, Nellymoser ASAO is not patented. If so, the implementation would
be obvious. The algorithm would have been described in detail as part of the
patent application."

There has been lots of talks on the choose of Macromedia to go for a closed-source audio codec in the Flash Player. Stefan Richter says the following about it:

"For those who don't know: Nellymoser is the name of the audio codec that is used when you record audio via the Flash Player (and subsequently save it to FCS/FMS). While the codec itself is not a bad one it's extremely restrictive. It's practically impossible to convert the flv audio portion to a portable format (such as mp3) if the Nellymoser codec was used for encoding. To make matters worse the developer has no choice but to use Nellymoser when recording audio through the Flash Player. Standalone encoders such as Sorenson Squeeze on the other hand can use mp3 instead."

Link: Open Source Tender: Implementation of an Audio Codec Compatible with Nellymoser Asao Codec (PDF).

Fullscreen Flash Video implementation

I quickly whipped up an example that shows the new Fullscreen feature of the Flash Player. If you want to test the functionality as well as testing out your CPU/performance just follow the link. I'll be working today on more examples with high bitrate encoded FLV's. Please post your questions or feedback :)

UPDATE 1: Make sure you have the latest beta plugin ( 9.0.18.60 ) installed, which you can download here.

UPDATE 2: I have another example where the source material is film, which looks absolutely stunning fullscreen.

UPDATE 3: Stefan has posted another great example that takes up the whole screen :)

Link: Fabchannel.com wins Webby for Best Music - Fabchannel.com.
Link: Cars Trailer - Mutoid.nl

Fullscreen Flash...Vividas will not be happy i reckon.

Rumours were that the FP team was cooking up some new features at Adobe's HQ and just a minute ago the news came out officially, the upcoming Flash Player release supports Full Screen playback right in your browser!

As said on the wiki, the primary use case is ofcourse Flash Video, and i'm sure we will see the Youtube's, MySpaces and the Google Video's will roll out tests supporting this feature. I'm wondering if it uses the hardware based 2D acceleration of the GPU, as it will ofload CPU usage and usually improve the image quality of the video. I'm definitely will start implementing this on Fabchannel.com tomorrow so you can watch the concerts fullscreen right on your PC.

Stefan blogged about Vividas and their implementation ( Java and On2 VP6 based ) and the one thing that i did like about Vividas was their fullscreen playback. I reckon they aren't very happy with this feature added now onto the plugin player.

Link: Flash Player:9:Update:Full-Screen Mode - Adobe Labs.

Really slick Email, Calendar, RSS, IM and VOIP client done in Flash!

I just found out about this really slick client built in Flash that handles email, RSS and VOIP, adds a calendar and IM capabilities and wraps it into an interface similar to Outlook / XP. I haven't seen the actual demo yet and i'm wondering if it's build on top of Flex 2. Check out the screenshots (click for a bigger view):

Link: CommuniGate Pro, email, calendaring, SIP based server.

Free FDT 1.5 Update, with Eclipse 3.2 support

I was just trying to find more information if FDT was supported on Eclipse 3.2 ( I basically live in Eclipse, together with Flash and Outlook ) and just found the team at Powerflasher announced a new shiny free 1.5 update yesterday!

Hi all,

thaaaaaank you for your patience. Its time again for some official words!

We know that it is a shame to take so much time for new releases. After months of development and weeks for updates with on time feature requests we had a stable and voluminous release with that everyone was happy. Month’s later there is no new major release – sorry for that. But be sure, we’re still working on it. Of course we do - we are 20 flash developers here at POWERFLASHER (and 10 more freelancers) and need it daily. The last months we just implemented things we need and some cool requests from you guys. Everyone can participate on the open beta to get the newest official version.

Now since Eclipse 3.2, the MAC issues and AS3 it is really time for a new version! And here it comes... We´ve hired a new FDT-Only-Developer to support Nico, Lars and the rest, we’ve bought some MACs (and using it ;)) and we´ll invest new resources in the forum. Please welcome “Arne FDT” :-) a genius java-developer.

In October you´ll get a free update to version 1.5 with:

• Eclipse 3.2 support
• MAC help update improved
• Better UTF-8 Support
• New: Project- and workspace wide reference search
• New: Mark occurrence in the editor area
• New: ass kick´in external Flashplayer with real helpful features and ANT support (windows only for the first step)
• New: classpath editor (imports projectclasspaths to the Flash IDE)
• And of course bugfixes and small other improved things

We hope that makes you happy again and it makes the time shorter till the AS3 version. Uh yes what about that? We´d tried to release this year but the pre-release with 1.5 took time from it. So it will be Q1/07, maybe a beta in end of the year. It is really hard work to implement multiply languages.

Summary: We will release in a couple days the 1.5 as free minorupdate with rock´in new features and in Q1 next year the AS3 version.

Link: FDT Forum // View topic - Offical: FDT 1.5 - New releases, new power!

Adobe's secret startup goes into VOIP space?

Quote:
"Adobe Systems wants to replicate its success in video space in the Voice over the Internet (VoIP) arena, making it easy to embed voice into web applications.  [...] Sources say, Dr. Henry Sinnreich, generally known as “The Godfather” of SIP (the Session Initiation Protocol) is helping the team, though we have no details about his role within the project. He was most recently the chief technology officer of Jeff Pulver’s VoIP greenhouse, Pulver.com, and prior to that worked for MCI."

Om Malik has the scoop on his blog: GigaOM - Flash In The VoIP Pan.

UPDATE:

Found more information on this blog, an interview with Adobe's Bhana Sharma, Entrepreneur in Residence.

Bhana: There is no intent to be a phone service provider - rather we just want to be a platform where service providers build all sort of clever applications. As long as the inheritance capabilities on the player and the platform are as good as any softphone and developing a workflow and a graphical interface & services and apps -- which is where hopefully they will make money some day, instead of PSTN replication, which is what the whole industry is doing right now.

Tom: Are you supporting SIP

Bhana Sharma: Currently we are only supporting H.263. In the future we’d like to support things like SIP. As you know we’ve brought Dr. Henry Sinnreich, onboard.

Tom: Yup, the grandfather of SIP

Bhana Sharma: Henry works on my team and he’s definitely going to be helping us on understanding how SIP applies. So we’re definitely serious about this space which is why we’re putting this rock solid team together.

Nice videoplayer in Flex 2 with tagging implementation

Just found out about this great FLV/Videoplayer done with Flex 2 by Motionbox. The cool feature ( and what looks the one that sets them apart from the 783.434.325 video sharing/blogging sites ;) ) is the tagging feature. You can click 'n drag in the timeline ( that is visualised using thumbnails instead of time-markers ) and then share or tag your selection with your friends or on the site if you create a profile. In a way it's some sort of deeplinking/permalinking in video's.

I know videosearch is getting a lot of attention (for years) in scientific circles and with the explosion of video that is captured, edited and made available online, whether by broadcasters,  professional filmmakers or ordinary people, it's an interesting market to watch. See a talk from Alexander Hauptmann on 'Effective Approaches to Video Search and Classification' at Google Video

Link: Motionbox Blog: Deep Tagging and the Embeddable Motionbox Player.

On CoverFlow...

As said in my previous post, i thought Apple copied the Cover Flow application from Oliver Steele, but it seems they actually bought the application. How cool :) Tony MacDonnel at Teknision has implemented the same idea for the FineTune remote player.

Quote:
We are pleased to announce that all CoverFlow technology and intellectual property was recently sold to Apple. It has been incorporated into the latest version of iTunes. Please visit www.apple.com/itunes

Link: Steel Skies: On CoverFlow
Link: Finetune RIA : Evolution of the Mixtape!

Gimme some Apple...

Just watched the live feed from Macrumors and me is excited! Apple returned back to the colorful iPods with the new Nano's and i can't wait to get myself a new green Nano as i had a Mini in the same color.

The bigger news is ofcourse the announcement of the Apple iTV, which from what i understand is some sort of MediaCenter that looks quite similar to the Mac Mini but is all wireless. And ofcourse you can watch your movies that you bought from iTunes on it. Yup, that's right...movies are now available on iTunes as well.

iTunes itself was updated to version 7 and now includes a view much like Cover Flow ( that site is getting hammered now because everyone is linking to it ) It's made by Oliver Steele who is Chief Software Architect at Laszlo. Thats' right..Apple shameless copying an implementation of it in their new iTunes )

Link: Apple - iPod nano