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Físchlár-TV: User's Guide
Físchlár-TV was an experimental web-based video recorder system, developed and maintained 1999 - 2004 by Centre for Digital Video Processing, DCU. It was part of the Centre's research demonstration which shows video management techniques that have been developed, including camera shot boundary detection, keyframe extraction, closed caption analysis, video streaming, XML architecture for video retrieval, and automatic recommendation and personalisation. More details can be found in a number of publications, including:
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- Microsoft Windows-based PCs (Windows 95, NT, 98, 2000, XP)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer v5+
- Screen resolution at least 1024 x 768
A small software plug-in (Oracle Video Player) needs to be installed for video playback - see
'Installing Video Player Plug-in' section below.
Every user of the system first has to register. When you visit
Físchlár-TV site (http://www.fischlar.dcu.ie/tv/), the page will ask you to either
register (first time only) or log in (once registered) as the screen shot on the right shows.
For registration, click the "Register..." button, and on the following page type
in your full email address then click "Register" button. After a few seconds, you will have
received an email from the system, confirming your registration with a password - so check your
email and note the password in this email. Once you have this, you can log in to the system
by typing in your full email address and password on the Login page. Once you are logged in, you can
change your password into something more memorable - by clicking on "My Account" button on
the bottom right.
The screen on the right shows when you are logged in. Before
going into any further, install a plug-in for video playback. To be able to play the videos on your PC, the Oracle Video Plug-in (streaming
video player software) has to be downloaded & installed. Once you are logged in,
click on "Get Browser and Plugins For Físchlár" (see the figure on the right).
Download and execute the file and click "yes" to all messages. The installation will finish
with the message saying "the installation is complete". Usually you don't need to restart the
computer. Now you can play videos available on Físchlár.
Físchlár-TV is a communal TV recording / playing system, which
allows you to request recording of broadcast TV programmes of today and tomorrow. To request
recording, the system provides a convenient online TV schedule for today and tomorrow. Click on
"TV Schedule/Recording" button (the red button on the above screen shot). You can browse
TV schedules by 8 channels or by genres, and simply click on a programme title you wish to record -
that is all you have to do to request recording. Once it has been requested, the title will bear
a red colour with an icon indicating this programme is scheduled to be recorded when the broadcast
time comes.
Note that some programmes are grayed out thus not possible to request for recording - these programmes are either already past (past programmes cannot be recorded) or overlaps with some other requested programmes in some other channels. Currently the system can record only 2 channels at the same time, thus if people requested same time in 2 different channels, all other channels in the same time zone will have to be grayed out and disabled.
Currently each user can request 3 programmes per day (thus total 6 programmes for today & tomorrow),
to allow other people to have chance to request, rather than allowing a single user to
request all programmes.
The programmes you (or other users) have requested recording will be
encoded in digital format (MPEG-1), analysed, and become available for you to browse & playback.
Go to Browse/Playback page (the playback button on the bottom bar) and see the list of titles that
are available at this moment (figure on the right). Recently recorded programmes are at the top of the list.
See what kind of programmes people have recorded... some of the programmes will be your own recording. As new programmes are added to the system, the older programmes will go to the lower end of the list. When an oldest programme reaches at the bottom, it will be automatically deleted to give storage for newly recorded programmes. Currently the system's storage is about 300 hours (corresponding about 30-40 programmes, about 2 weeks period), so if you have requested a recording, you want to watch it before 2 weeks - it will be deleted after about 2 weeks.
Some programmes are available with Closed Caption from teletext. You can search
the closed caption by using the search box (in the figure) - type in words, and the result will
be displayed below: the programmes and their segments in which the typed words were mentioned.
Not all programmes have teletext information with the video (e.g. programmes in
TV3 and TG4 currently do not have), thus the search feature sometimes
does not retrieve some programmes.
Once you located a programme you want to see from the list or by searching, click on
a title to see on the right side of the screen an "overview" of the progarmme content (see figure) with brief description,
some important scenes in the programmes, and quick link to
other available episodes. The images have been automatically extracted from the recording, giving
a rough idea of what visual scenes the programme contains without having to play the video. It is
similar to "scene access" feature of many DVD films, but in Físchlár images are automatically
selected and presented using video analysis techniques developed in the Centre.
Clicking on any of the images will pop up the installed player and start
streamed playback from the clicked scene onwards (figure). You will notice a few second delay
in starting the playing - to be able to stream the video content, it requires to store some
data at the beginning of the playback (buffering) and this is true in any other streamed video
services on the web. The playback window can be full-screen by
Alt+Enter (and back to normal window by Esc button) on the keyboard, or right-mouse click on the
player window then selecting "Full screen". Full screen will be more comfortable to watch
the video from a distance. To stop playing, close the player window.
If you find the overview images too rough or want to browse more detailed content without
playing, Físchlár provides a few interactive keyframe browsers with different styles. Click on the
"Detail View" button just beside the programme title (see figure), which will show you larger
images selected from the beginning of the programme content. The timeline is presented showing
at which point the images are extracted and you can click on any part of the timeline to see
camera-shot level of detailed content. Clicking on any of the images will start playback as
in overview screen.
The figure on the right shows the interactive Timeline browser.
Click on any part of the timeline and browse the scenes at that point, look for a particular
scene in mind, and play from that point. The browser is similar to the "scene access" of DVD films,
but the access point is much more detailed and in most cases you will not have to guess in
which scene what you were looking for would happen.
The figure on the right shows the interactive timeline browser.
Click on any part of the timeline and browse the scenes at that point, look for a particular
scene in mind, and play from that point. The browser is similar to the "scene access" of DVD films,
but the access point is much more detailed and in most cases you will not have to guess in
which scene what you were looking for would happen.
As highlighted on the figure on the right,
the options for different content browsers with different styles can be selected, currently
Slide Show browser with automatic flipping through selected on the figure beside.
Slide Show browser presents all the shot-level images
one by one, automatically flipping through them. A user can stop the flipping
and manually flip one by one, or bring the mouse cursor over the short timeline
below the image and drag to immediately jump to that point in the video.
Clicking on the image at any point in the browser will start playback from the
clicked shot onwards.
Hierarchical browser (see figure beside) presents images arranged in hierarchical
order. When you select this browser, 6 images are presented at the top of the browser,
and bringing the mouse cursor over these will expand one of the 6 images showing
more detail in that segment. The mouse-over action allows you to quickly drill up
and down the hierarchically arranged images. Clicking any of the images while browsing
will start playback from the clicked shot onwards.
Try and experiment with different interactive keyframe
browsers and see which ones you like. Físchlár remembers the selection you made
last time, and will show that browser next time you want to see detail view.
Throughout the Físchlár system's pages, you will
notice thumbs-up and -down icons beside each programme. By clicking on this 5-scale thumb icon
indicating how much you like/dislike a programme, Físchlár can automatically
infer the kind of programmes you will like to watch in the future, and recommend such programmes.
On the online TV schedule page (see figure on the right), along with channel names and genre names,
you can see what programmes have been recommended to you, by clicking on "Recommendations" category - this
category is the default display when you first visits the TV schedule page. Recommended programmes
span across any channels and genre, making a list of programmes that you will like to have a look thus saving
your schedule browsing effort. As you indicate the thumbs icons more and more, and request recordings
more and more, the system will build more reliable profile and select programmes more reliably.
Check if the recommended programmes are really what you'd like to see. Different users receive different
list of recommended programmes.
DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY 2009