Automatic information extraction systems have been a high-interest research topic in academic circles for many years, but the challenge remains to bring these techniques into operational media production environments.
As one of their principal objectives, the members of the EBU P/SCAIE Group last month organised the AIEMPro08 workshop, to investigate opportunities, and to foster exchange of ideas on the subject among researchers, practitioners and professionals. The event had the format of a classical scientific workshop, including a call for papers phase, a review by a technical programme committee, and a final decision on which contributions to accept for oral presentation.
| Two world's firsts
According to Alberto Messina (RAI R&D), chairing the event, “this was a unique opportunity for academic researchers and broadcast professionals to exchange information on existing technologies, exploitation requirements and possible future deployment scenarios."
Another ‘première’ was the availability of test material provided by several EBU members (NHK, RAI, VGTRK, VRT) for the purpose of this event and for research tests. |
Extract from news segmentation research |
Helping educate
Mr Messina noted leading experts all agree in recognising automation of information extraction processes as a key for cost-efficient production in a competitive, cross-platform environment. But he also said that the learning curve is steep and although some technologies already exist, more have been promised. Assessing and implementing these techniques is very demanding and challenging. P/SCAIE is there to help and advise.
A similar workshop is planned for 2009. EBU Members can download the presentations from the Publications Library. For more information on EBU work on this topic, please contact: Jean-Pierre Evain (EBU).