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Annodex is a digital media format developed by CSIRO to provide annotation and indexing of continuous media, such as audio and video. It is based on the Ogg container format, with an XML language called CMML (Continuous Media Markup Language) providing additional metadata. It is intended to create a Continuous Media Web (CMWeb), whereby continuous media can be manipulated in a similar manner to text media on the World Wide Web, including searching and dynamic arrangement of elements. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the national government body for scientific research in Australia. ... OGG can refer to several items: Ogg is a multimedia bitstream container, used for audio and video files, especially Vorbis audio files. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of describing many different kinds of data. ... Metadata (Greek meta after and Latin data information) are data that describe other data. ... The Web and WWW redirect here. ...

History

The specific design of the elements of the Continuous Media Web project were invented by Silvia Pfeiffer and Conrad Parker at CSIRO Australia in mid-2001. Some of the ideas behind CMML and the generic addressing of temporal offsets were proposed in a 1997 paper by Bill Simpson-Young and Ken Yap. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the national government body for scientific research in Australia. ... For alternate uses of time, see Time (disambiguation) or see TIME (magazine). ... See offset for reference to Computer terminology. ...

In January 2002 the Annodex team took on two students, Andrew Nesbit and Andre Pang, along with Simon Lai who became the first person to author meaningful content in CMML. During this time the basics of the Annodex technology were designed, including the design of temporal URI fragments, the basic DTDs, the choice of the Ogg encapsulation format and the initial design of the libraries. For alternate uses of time, see Time (disambiguation) or see TIME (magazine). ... Uri is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland. ... DTD is an initialism that can stand for: Document Type Definition, used in SGML and XML programming (similar to DOCTYPE Document Type Declaration) Delta Tau Delta, a US-based college fraternity Double Talk Detection, a method of detecting (voice) signals from both ends of a telephone line, useful in acoustic...

By late 2004, Andre Pang developed the Annodex Plug-in for Mozilla Firefox Browsers, allowing for the playback of Annodex media encoded with the Ogg Theora video codec and the Ogg Vorbis audio codec. Time URIs implemented at the Location Bar provides the server-side seeking functionality on Annodex media and enables hyperlinking into and out of Annodex media through a Table of contents clip list for CMML content. A plugin (or plug-in) is a computer program that can, or must, interact with another program to provide a certain, usually very specific, function. ... Firefox redirects here. ... OGG can refer to several items: Ogg is a multimedia bitstream container, used for audio and video files, especially Vorbis audio files. ... Theora is a video codec being developed by the Xiph. ... A video codec is a device or software module that enables video compression or decompression for digital video. ... OGG can refer to several items: Ogg is a multimedia bitstream container, used for audio and video files, especially Vorbis audio files. ... Vorbis is an open and free lossy audio compression codec project headed by the Xiph. ... An audio codec is a computer program that compresses/decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file format or streaming audio format. ... Uri is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland. ... The abbreviation TOC could refer to: Table of content A table of contents found at the beginning of a book The Table of Contents on data CDs The table of content in MediaWiki. ...

Over time there was increasing development of Annodex technology from the open-source community, starting with Debian packages by Jamie Wilkinson, Python bindings by Ben Leslie, and Perl bindings by Angus Lees. The command-line authoring tools were completed early in 2001, whilst being continually updated to adhere to the current Version 3 of the Annodex annotation standards by 2005 ^[1]. It has been suggested that Open source culture be merged into this article or section. ... Debian, organized by the Debian Project, is a widely used distribution of free software developed through the collaboration of volunteers from around the world. ... Python is an interpreted programming language created by Guido van Rossum in 1990. ... Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below) is a dynamic procedural programming language designed by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ... A command line interface or CLI is a method of interacting with a computer by giving it lines of textual commands (that is, a sequence of characters) either from keyboard input or from a script. ...

In November 2005, CSIRO wanted to focus on closed-source research and build existing products on top of the technology, thus losing interest in the open source standard components of it. Therefore, a decision was made to separate out the open-source components into its own organisation by creating an Annodex Foundation similar in spirit to the many other foundations that have been created around other FOSS technologies^[2]. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the national government body for scientific research in Australia. ... Closed source is an antonym for open source software and refers to any program whose license does not meet the definition of open source software. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... It has been suggested that Open source culture be merged into this article or section. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Look up Foundation on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Foundation may refer to: A type of makeup. ... FOSS is an acronym for free and open source software that is most often used in English-speaking military software communities. ...

Technology

The core technical specification documents on Annodex are being developed through the Annodex community. They consist of the following components as follows:

CMML

Continuous Media Markup Language is a XML markup language for time-continuous data such as audio and video. The main principles of CMML are as follows: The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of describing many different kinds of data. ... A specialized markup language using SGML is used to write the electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary. ...

• Enables the description of structure for a media file through marking up temporal clips
• Allows attachment of hyperlinks and annotations to the clips.
• Used for authoring of Annodex content through the stream tag.

A hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. ... Annotation is extra information associated with a particular point in a document or other piece of information. ...

Example of CMML Content

 <cmml> <stream timebase="0"> <import src="galaxies.mpg" contenttype="video/mpeg"/> </stream> <head> <title>Hidden Galaxies</title> <meta name="author" content="CSIRO"/> </head> <clip id=findingGalaxies" start="15"> <a href="http://www.aao.gov.au/galaxies.anx#radio"> Related video on detection of galaxies </a> <img src="galaxy.jpg"/> <desc>What's out there?</desc> <meta name="KEYWORDS" content="Radio Telescope"/> </clip> </cmml> 

The origin of the CMML document, along with further documentation and standards can be found at Annodex CMML Standard Version 2.1

Annodex File Format

Annodex File Structure

Annodex is an encapsulation format, which interleaves time-continuous data with CMML markup in a streamable manner. The Annodex format is built on the Ogg encapsulation format to allows for internet servers and proxies to manage temporal subparts and reconstruct files from annodexed clips. This introduces the following stream types: OGG can refer to several items: Ogg is a multimedia bitstream container, used for audio and video files, especially Vorbis audio files. ... Encapsulation may refer to: (in the vernacular) expressing an idea with few words, such as with an adage, proverb, slogan, or jingle (in software engineering) the process of enclosing programming elements inside a larger, more abstract entity, similar to information hiding and separation of concerns. ...

• A Skeleton meta-header stream
• a CMML annotation stream

Further information can be found at the following site: Annodex Annotation Format for Time-continuous Bitstreams, Version 3.0

Time intervals in URIs

To include time-continuous content such as audio and video media into the Web, we need to be able to point hyperlinks into such content to address temporal offsets. Further information can be found at the following site: Annodex Time Intervals in URI Queries and Fragments

Notes and references

External links

• Annodex Portal
• Annodex Foundation
• CSIRO ICT Centre