New techniques for storing and presenting video clips on home and mobile devices

VTT are serving as experts in a European project for developing processing methods for mobile videos. In the near future consumers will be able to store videos taken by video camera and video phones to their personal digital archives, where they can search and browse them, share them with their friends and view them on their own devices. The videos are easy to find and view on a computer, mobile phone or handheld computer. The new methods promote the commercialisation of video services and business activity in the field and improve the competitiveness of Finnish companies.

In the future it will be easy for the consumer to browse through her own digital video archive. High resolution image (651 Kb) Photo: VTT

VTT is involved in the work of designing new video processing methods for videos and is in charge of the practical tests in video processing. With the methods under development the locations and dates of the videos are stored in a database, as is information on the image and sound content and technical aspects of the shots. Thus the stored videos are easy to browse utilising intelligent video retrieval methods. The video is adjusted according to the terminal device, when transferred e.g. to the camera phone. The adaptation makes video transfer quick and cheap, as a small amount of image data is sufficient for image precision on a camera phone. The original shot with video camera precision contains an enormous amount of image data.

During the coming summer VTT and partners will be testing novel European methods to store, retrieve, compress, transfer and present videos on a camera telephone or a computer. After the summer the methods will be integrated into single system. In the future consumers will be able to store videos into their own digital archives from which they can be viewed by their friends, family members and the consumers themselves on their own respective computers. Commercialisation of the new methods will take 3 to 5 years.

The R & D work is funded by VTT, Solid Information Technology, Hantro Products Oy and Tekes. The work forms a considerable part of an extensive Eureka project led by Bosch, and involving four European countries and 14 participating parties, among them Philips.

Solid Information Technology is developing distributed database technologies. Jorma Palo, technology manager, says that the development work for processing mobile videos has progressed to the point of exploring the commercial prospects of the most recent digital media. In the future the amounts of video data to be stored will be really vast, and consumers want to see their videos fast. The results of the development work will enable the development of convenient methods for the video products of the future. With this project the Finns can also make a significant contribution to the European standardisation work.

Photo: VTT	Photo: Solid Information Technology
VTT Electronics Johannes Peltola, Researcher Tel. +358 8 551 2413 johannes.peltola@vtt.fi	Solid Information Technology Jorma Palo, Technology Manager Tel. Mob. +358 40 846 7667 jorma.palo@solidtech.com	Hantro Products Oy Jarkko Nisula, Head of SW-group Tel. +358 8 815 6323 jarkko.nisula@hantro.com