Using Metadata to Provide Synchronised and Scalable Broadcast and Internet Content and Services

The continuing convergence of broadcast services and the Internet, the growing popularity of digital and interactive TV, and the growth of user mobility are the main driving forces behind the European IST SAVANT project. SAVANT (Synchronised and Scalable AV content Across NeTworks) aims to advance the convergence of broadcasting and the Internet by developing integrated technologies and simultaneously employing broadcast and telecom networks to achieve added-value services to conventional digital and interactive television. SAVANT will apply the concepts of scalable content and scalable services to allow end users to access and retrieve interrelated and synchronised multimedia content in an intelligent and transparent manner on stationary and mobile terminals with different capabilities and under varying network conditions. This scalable approach implies the automated adaptation of content and services to the capabilities of different user terminals and user preferences. It also supports the distribution of content based on the capabilities of the networks present. Content and service adaptation relies on content and media management, semantics-based annotation, delivery and access. Semantic tags and structure (metacontent) are already becoming part of the broadcast and Internet content creation process – a trend strengthened by the development of several semi -automatic annotation tools. The vocabulary problem introduced by the abundance of metadata schemas, and the problem of mapping metadata syntax to associated meaning is being addressed by standardisation efforts such as those of the MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) forum. SAVANT aims to build on metadata standards, such as MPEG-21 and MPEG-7, to support the different aspects of the automatic adaptation. This paper describes two scenarios demonstrating the application of the scalable content and services, and provides an overview of the SAVANT system, in particular, the terminal where users access these services. Finally, a number of metadata standards and their suitability in providing synchronised and scalable broadcast and Internet content and services within SAVANT are discussed.