1. Metadata om te creëren
Automatisch
Nieuwsproductie
Robbie De Sutter
MediaNet Vlaanderen
3 december 2008
© VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

2. Introduction – Making the News
2 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

3. Dopesheets
Information on the news story
 Description content (who, what, where, when, …)
 Administrative information (reporter, cameraman, …)
 Rights information (usage terms, copyright statement, …)
 Technical information (video format, audio format, …)
…
Initially: plain text (cf. telex)
Currently: proprietary structured text (XML, e.g. NMS)
Future: international standardized structured text (XML)
IPTC’s NewsML-G2
3 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

4. Telex
4 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

5. Dopesheet Examples
5 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

6. NewsML-G2
International (industrial) standard approved by IPTC
(shortened) Timeline
 1997: NITF
 2000: NewsML 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 (too complicated and ineffective)
 2008: NewsML-G2
Objectives NewsML-G2:
Interoperability between providers and consumers

Extensibility

Clarity and compactness of the syntax

Ease of storage

Ease of processing for relational or object mapping

New focus on “semantic” capabilities (Web 2.0 ready)

6 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

7. Taxonomie references
1 News Item
(~ 1 dopesheet
~1 news story)
Rights information
(accountable, copyright holder,
usage terms)
Item management
(version management, provider,
role, title, web ref.)
Administrative Data
(content created, creator,
contributor, audience)
Descriptive Data
(language, genre, subject,
headline, slugline, dateline,
by, description)
Parts of an Item
Concept Definitions and
(shots, scenes, image regions)
Concept Relations
contains descriptive data and time
boundaries (named entities and abstract
concepts –
Person/organisation details,
geopolitical area, POI)
Alternative renditions
(inline XML, inline/remote Data)
7 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

8. Current Situation @ VRT
Other sources
EBU SuperPop Reuters WNE Server
(APTN, Belga, …)
MPEG-2 Longgop MPEG-2 Longgop
NewsML-G2
EBUNMS (& Text) ReutersNMS (& NewsML 1.1)
NewsML-G2 NewsML-G2
Enterprise Service Bus
Transcoding Others
MAM
Agility (iNews, …)
Avid
MPEG-2 Longgop to DV25
Ardome
8 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

9. Integration NewsML-G2 – VRT MAM
Transcoding
(open source solution)
EBU SuperPop Send to MAM
MPEG-2 Longgop (NewsML-G2 Parser –
SOAP – FTP)
NewsML-G2 Parser
EBU Webserver (optional GUI demo)
NewsML-G2
VRT
MAM
9 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

10. Automatic News Production
NewsML-G2 handling
Parsing + transcoding
EBU SuperPop
News Clips
MAM
Vodcast
VRT iNews
Rundowns
Personalized
News Production
10 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

11. Automatic News Production
Now @ VRT:
 Classical broadcast: linear, 5 broadcasts a day
 On-demand (“ooit gemist”): replay of the linear broadcasts
 Web (“deredactie.be”): news clips, continuous updates
Linear broadcasts have a rigid structure
 E.g., 19h news
– Max 20 news items
– Max 40 minutes
More content available than broadcasted
 News feeds (EBU/Eurovision, Reuters, …)
 Produced items never or only a few times broadcasted
11 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

12. Goals
Enable a news consumer to compose his own news programme
 Select only the news categories he is interested in
– e.g., national weather, international business, …
 Sort the news categories according to his personal relevance
– e.g., first sport, then business, then politics
 Specify the maximum duration of the news
– e.g., his commuting time is 30 minutes, so 30 minutes of
news
 Let him choose to receive unedited (“raw”) news materials/feeds
– e.g., every news items about science & technology
 Let him watch the news items offline
– e.g., play his news on a mobile device, such as iPod Touch
Without interfering with current news production processes
12 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

13. Architecture
Personalized
News Source VRT
News
Manage
Media &
Metadata
News Aggregator &
News Source EBU Media Coder
13 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

14. Back-end:
News Sources – VRT & EBU
14 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

15. Back-end:
News Item Management
15 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

16. Back-end:
Enrich metadata
Specify category news item
(automatic for EBU items)
Specify original
material(s)
16
16 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

17. Front-end:
News Aggregator & Transcoding
17 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

18. Front-end:
Personalized VodCast URL
18 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

19. Front-end:
Vodcast
19 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

20. Front-end:
VodCast Play-back
20 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie

21. Final remarks
By intelligently processing the available metadata
automatic personalized news bulletin generation is feasible
However, some “gaps”
 IPR management (now: free text – no automatic usage approval)
 category assignment for VRT news items
 item versioning (linking items)
Tools might solve some of these gaps
21 © VRT-medialab: onderzoek en innovatie