Searching and browsing a shared video database

VideoSTAR (Video STorage And Retrieval) is an experimental video database system that gives support for sharing and reuse of video and meta-data. We discuss the need for a user to control the degree of meta-data sharing when searching and browsing a shared video database and we propose a way of organising meta-data to allow such functionality. This paper also presents a video query algebra utilizing the way meta-data are organised that allows the user to formulate temporal queries on the video contents. In the last part of the paper we discuss the use of the proposed concepts and the query algebra for video querying and browsing. We present a prototype video query tool implemented on top of the VideoSTAR framework that allows users to formulate quite complex queries based on the meta-data available in the VideoSTAR repositories.