Description and retrieval across multiple media formats

In a variety of contexts, as in multimedia distance learning systems, multimedia analysis systems or for general information purposes, the task of retrieving appropriate information from a large number of multimedia documents has gained increasing importance. This paper looks at approaches to add meta data or descriptions to multimedia documents, making the semantics contained in these documents accessible to automated retrieval techniques. As one of these approaches the natural language like description language FSCL and the natural language like query language FSQL are introduced. In the description of FSQL specific emphasis is put on the retrieval across documents of multiple media formats, retaining the correct semantic relationships among these documents.