Reports of the Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group at W3C

Posted on August 20, 2007 by Ivan Herman

Many applications that process multimedia assets make use of some form of metadata that describe the multimedia content. Machine understanding of metadata coming from different applications is a basic requirement, but often a critical problem, due to the interoperability of distributed multimedia systems. The W3C Multimedia Semantics XG has worked on this problem in several ways:

  • It has published reports showing the advantages of using Semantic Web languages and technologies for the creation, storage, manipulation, interchange and processing of metadata for images[1], and, more generally, for different media types[2]. In both cases, the documents contain representative use cases showing interoperability problems when combining several metadata standards. It explains how the use of Semantic Web languages enhances the interoperability and presents numerous conversion of existing standards into OWL/RDF as well as guidelines for using Semantic Web languages for annotating multimedia content.
  • In addition, the group maintains a relevant list of multimedia metadata standards, as well as the RDF/OWL ontologies representing them[3]. A list of publicly available tools processing multimedia metadata is also provided.
  • Finally, given the specific status of MPEG-7, a last document published by the group presents the various “ontologization” of MPEG-7[4].

The Multimedia Semantics XG would like now to pursue its work within the framework of a new W3C XG (to be formed), and outreach its results to the industry.

  1. Raphaël Troncy, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Jeff Z. Pan and Giorgos Stamou (Eds). Image Annotation on the Semantic Web. Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group Report (XGR), 14 August 2007.
  2. Vassilis Tzouvaras, Raphaël Troncy and Jeff Z. Pan (Eds). Multimedia Annotation Interoperability Framework. Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group Report Editor’s Draft, 14 August 2007.
  3. Michael Hausenblas, Susanne Boll, Tobias Bürger, Oscar Celma, Christian Halaschek-Wiener, Erik Mannens and Raphaël Troncy (Eds). Multimedia Vocabularies on the Semantic Web. Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group Report (XGR), 24 July 2007.
  4. Oscar Celma, Stamatia Dasiopoulou, Michael Hausenblas, Suzanne Little, Chrisa Tsinaraki and Raphaël Troncy (Eds). MPEG-7 and the Semantic Web. Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group Report Editor’s Draft, 14 August 2007.

About Ivan Herman

Ivan Herman is the Semantic Web Activity Lead at W3C. He graduated as a mathematician at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary, in 1979. After a brief scholarship at the Université Paris VI he joined the Hungarian research institute in computer science (SZTAKI) where he worked for 6 years. He left Hungary in 1986 and, after a few years in industry, he joined the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Sciences (CWI) in Amsterdam where he has held a tenure position since 1988. He received a PhD degree in Computer Science in 1990 at the Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Ivan joined the W3C team as Head of Offices in January 2001 while maintaining his position at CWI. He served as Head of Offices until June 2006, when he was asked to take the Semantic Web Activity Lead position.

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