Language for content description, sharing and retrieval of distributed multimedia information

There has been significant progress in the area of content-based still image retrieval systems. However, most of the existing visual information management systems use static feature analysis models decided by database implementers based on their heuristics, and use indexing oriented data modeling techniques. In other words, such systems have limitations of areas including scalability, extensibility and adaptability. In this paper, we will attempt to resolve the problems that surface in content modeling, description and sharing of distributed heterogeneous multimedia information. A language; named UCDL (Unified Content Description Language), for heterogeneous multimedia content description is presented to resolve the related problem. The resulting UCDL facilitates a formal content modeling and description method for complex multimedia content and the exchange of heterogeneous content information. The proposed language has several advantages. For instance, an individual user can easily create audio-visual descriptions by using a library of automated tools. Users can perform automated testing of content description for correctness and completeness before populating the database and its use. Note that with UCDL, content description becomes implementation independent, thus offering portability across a number of applications from authoring tools to database management systems. Users can have personalized retrieval view through content filtering, and can easily share the heterogeneous content descriptions of various information sources. In addition, the proposed language can be a part of MPEG-7 DDL.