As someone called me, I’m “the guy in the green shirt” that talked about the online video segmentation tool at Dork Shorts. If anyone is interested in more discussion, demos, etc. about working with video segmentation and annotations, working with Omeka, general talk about video, etc., I would like to give another session in MLC 250 from 9:30 – 10:45. Just drop by for a general discussion if interested.

While I am perfectly willing to discuss broader digital video issues, I would like to focus on adding video segments and annotation to Omeka, specifically Omeka Exhibits. I feel that rather than putting the burden of video editing, that is finding and cutting all the video segments you want to use from say a two hour interview, on the creator of the video in order to upload those segments individually as Omeka items to get the highlights or often the significant parts of the video online is not the best approach. I am proposing that we allow access to the entire video but that we can segment and annotate that video in a separate tool, in this case the Annotator’s Workbench (AWB), an open source, Java tool that allows the segmentation and annotation of video files, producing an xml file that contains this information. I then want to upload that xml file as a set of Omeka items that are based on the segments and annotations I created in the AWB. I should then be able to use those video segments and annotations as items in an exhibit without having to create a bunch of individual video files. I have done some work with this and would like to show everyone where the project stands and get input on whether such a plugin is valuable and how it might be improved.

What digital video segmentation and annotation might look like in Omeka

I might add that I have a NEH ODH start-up grant to work on this project so this session can have some direct impact on how such a plugin would be built.