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NinSuna: a fully integrated platform for format-independent multimedia content adaptation and delivery using Semantic Web technologies

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Abstract

The current multimedia landscape is characterized by a significant heterogeneity in terms of coding and delivery formats, usage environments, and user preferences. The main contribution of this paper is a discussion of the design and functioning of a fully integrated platform for multimedia adaptation and delivery, called NinSuna. This platform is able to efficiently deal with the aforementioned heterogeneity in the present-day multimedia ecosystem, thanks to the use of format-agnostic adaptation engines (i.e., engines independent of the underlying coding format) and format-agnostic packaging engines (i.e., engines independent of the underlying delivery format). Moreover, NinSuna also provides a seamless integration between metadata standards and adaptation processes. Both our format-independent adaptation and packaging techniques rely on a model for multimedia bitstreams, describing the structural, semantic, and scalability properties of these multimedia streams. News sequences were used as a test case for our platform, enabling the user to select news fragments matching his/her specific interests and usage environment characteristics.

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Notes

  1. In the remainder of this paper, ‘XML-driven content adaptation’ is used as a collective term to refer to these techniques.

  2. NinSuna is short for “The NinSuna INtelligent Search framework for UNiversal multimedia Access”.

  3. The mime-type class is defined in the Core Ontology for MultiMedia (COMM, [3]).

  4. To express the unit of measure, we use concepts of the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO, [39]). Note that we use the OWL DL implementation of SUMO, which is available at http://www.stuarthendren.net/sumodl.

  5. A website containing information regarding the NinSuna platform and an online demo is available on http://multimedialab.elis.ugent.be/NinSuna.

  6. See http://www.w3.org/2008/01/media-annotations-wg.html for more information.

  7. http://developer.apple.com/opensource/server/streaming/

  8. http://gpac.sourceforge.net/packager.php

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Acknowledgements

The research activities as described in this paper were funded by Ghent University, the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT), the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT), the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-Flanders), and the European Union.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departement of Electronics and Information Systems—Multimedia Lab, Ghent University—IBBT, Gaston Crommenlaan 8, bus 201, 9050, Ledeberg-Ghent, Belgium

    Davy Van Deursen, Wim Van Lancker, Wesley De Neve, Tom Paridaens, Erik Mannens & Rik Van de Walle

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  1. Davy Van Deursen
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  2. Wim Van Lancker
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  3. Wesley De Neve
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  4. Tom Paridaens
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  5. Erik Mannens
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  6. Rik Van de Walle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Davy Van Deursen.

Additional information

At the time of writing, Wesley De Neve was also with the Image and Video Systems Lab of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea.

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Van Deursen, D., Van Lancker, W., De Neve, W. et al. NinSuna: a fully integrated platform for format-independent multimedia content adaptation and delivery using Semantic Web technologies. Multimed Tools Appl 46, 371–398 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-009-0354-0

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