[Vorbis] Re: brainfart #67453 - hyper-index

[André Pang]

On 26/07/2004, at 7:06 PM, O Si Yo wrote:

> I don't know if this has been suggested before but..
>
> What about adding support for a bookmark or
> hyperlinked index?
>
> The idea is that a large compilation such as a long
> speech or an album would be maintained as a single
> file, but on playback, the player would show numerous
> 'tracks' which are really just bookmarks relating to
> starting position of the specific part or topic.
>
> i.e. Audio books could be indexed by chapters or
> sections  or in the case of music albums, each track
> title would be listed  with the ability to select any
> of interest.
>
> a potential expansion would be for lesson type files,
> which could be tracked by some sore of progress ap, to
> save the last lesson listened to and perhaps jump to a
> section where review is indicated.
>
> Mainly the idea is to keep all the sections together
> as one file, but to allow for random access to
> sections / topics etc.

The ideas that you're speaking of are very similar to what we're
working on with the Annodex project:

http://www.annodex.net/

In particular, the "hyperlinked index" that you speak of can be done
with CMML, an XML-like markup language which contains annotations,
metadata, and hyperlinking information:

http://www.annodex.net/TR/draft-pfeiffer-cmml-01.html

(or follow the "Specifications" link from the main Annodex page)

One CMML document can reference an arbitrary number of
video/audio/other streams, and by using the command-line tools on the
website, it's possible to merge them all into a single "Annodex" file,
which is what you're after.  This all works today; however, I see two
problems with what you want to do:

1. The tools are a bit primitive at the moment: no fancy GUI
point'n'click tools exist here to annotate your video with metadata.
They work fine for developer use, though, and the developer libraries
are mature enough to use now.

2. Although the Annodex encapsulation format is based on Ogg,
Annodex files are not quite compatible with Ogg files, unfortunately
(although this is something that we may be changing in the future, to
achieve 100% compatibility with standard Ogg files).  So, you'll need a
player which explicitly supports Annodex files for this to work.  At
this time of writing, the only player which supports both Annodex files
and CMML is VideoLAN.  The support is pretty bare: you can follow
hyperlinks specified in CMML markup to other files, but full web
browser-like functionality is still a fair way off.  The CVS version of
xine supports Annodex files as of a few weeks ago, but has no support
for CMML yet.  I'm working on that now.

If you're really interested, email me in private or on one of the
Annodex mailing lists if you'd like more info.


--
% Andre Pang : trust.in.love.to.save