Web / TV : Convergence or Crossbreeding

INA (French Audiovisual Institute) has the most important audiovisual fund in France.

"INA collects programmes from French public television channels and radios, stocks and restores them, and provides access for professionals. It also continues to enrich its archives by acquiring collections from public and private organisations."

We are investigating how to use Internet to make the most of this fund (to product new programs or to sell the old one).

From a practical viewpoint,

we are trying to evaluate which video and commercial technologies we will use.

This approach result in experimentations on our web site (http://www.ina.fr) and especially the "Second World War French archives" project (15 hours of video - from the 50 hours of this stock footage - are available on the web in the VIVO format, in three different compression rates.)

From a research viewpoint,

our three main areas of investigation, in relation with the workshop, are :

• video indexation and navigation and associated formats,
• multisupport/multiformat production,
• From a larger viewpoint, studies of all the aspects of the convergence between TV (broadcast) and network (IP) world. This goes from the technical evolution to the economic model and through the change in the contents offer or the legal differences.

Moreover, INA is involved in different European projects (for instance DICEMAN, which main issue is MPEG7) or working groups (EBU Webcasting for the Broadcaster).