Collaborative Video Annotation Environments: Implemented Features and a new Approach for Object Detection and Recognition

In the different phases of a movie production there is a need for intensive discussion about the produced sequences. Special problems can appear if the discussion members are located at different places and have to describe precisely their critics for the video production. The only possibility to avoid this problem is a meeting that in general involves loss of time and costs. This paper describes an existing approach for a distributed video collaboration tool to simplify and support the video production process for video editing service providers and their customers. The tool is expandable to customer needs by offering a plug-in interface and it is also suitable for just making frame specific annotations. Beside the already existing functions, an object based approach for the video annotation of 3D-Modelling-/Animation-Tools and semi virtual recordings is presented. Based on the standards MPEG-7 and MPEG-4, the collected data can also be passed to other applications.