REPLAY (software)
Encyclopedia
Background
REPLAY was developed as the future Multimedia Portal of ETH ZurichETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
within the scope of the ICT
Information and communication technologies
Information and communications technology or information and communication technology, usually abbreviated as ICT, is often used as an extended synonym for information technology , but is usually a more general term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of...
strategy 2006-2009 and got branded „REPLAY“ in 2007. It is to manage the audiovisual content of ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
from production to distribution in an automated manner.
Application area
The main focus of REPLAY is the quasi automated handling of large number of lecture recordings (>150 per week) and to provide an integrated management solution for other video objects (films, digitizationDigitizing
Digitizing or digitization is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or a signal by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal...
results etc.). Thus, it covers all the audiovisual material usually to be found in academic and other institutions (museums, companies etc.).
Workflow
REPLAY covers the complete lifecycle of the audiovisual objects: In the classroom / lecture hall, the LinuxLinux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
-based Playmobil as an additional hardware component automatically captures audio, video, and VGA (for slides/presentations/computer display/other devices). After the lecture, these sources are bundled with metadata and proceeded into the REPLAY backend. Other video material can be ingested through an inbox.
All bundles are then
- archived,
- indexed (based on slide content, using Optical Character Recognition
Optical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
),
- encoded according to settings and
- distributed in various channels (RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
, streaming, download etc.)
One of the distribution channels is Interplay, a user interface designed for interactive consumption of video.
Much of the indexing and searching functionalites comes from Yovisto
Yovisto
Yovisto is an academic video search engine specialized in academic content.-Overview:Yovisto's search index is based on the combination of automated content based video analysis with user generated collaborative annotation...
, a German metadata search engine for academic content.
Qualities
REPLAY is written in JavaJava (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
and oriented towards standards wherever possible. It is modular in design and envisaged to run on a singular machine as well as in a distributed environment.
License
REPLAY is Open SourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
under GNU LGPL license version 2
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
.
Development
Development website. Replay has been developed towards release 0.7 (March 2009); as of June 2009 the project has ended and support was suspended by the end of 2009. Efforts around REPLAY and its technology are beinge transferred to the Opencast Matterhorn projectOpencast
Opencast is a term to describe audio and video content, primarily in an academic context. It combines the terms "Open" for Open Source and/or Open Access and "Broadcast"...
.