Web Based Tv Station

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INTERNET-BASED PERSONAL TV STATION ENABLINGINDIVIDUALS TO PRODUCE, DISTRIBUTE, AND VIEW

TV PROGRAMS

Narichika HamaguchiJ apan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)

1-10-11, Kinuta, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, 157-8510, J apan

Mamoru Doke(Same as above)

Masaki Hayashi(Same as above)

ABSTRACT

A user-friendly TV system dubbed TV4U has been developed, which enables amateur users to produce and distribute

their own TV programs over the Internet that can be easily accessed and viewed by others. In TV4U, programs aredivided into three component partsprogram script, material, and program directionsthat can be separately created and

distributed. Dividing programs up in this way enables users to produce programs by simply writing a program script andcombining program directions created by other creators. This paper presents an overview of a prototype version of TV4Uthat supports everything from production of programming content to distribution and browsing the user-produced

programs.

KEYWORDS

Internet Personal Broadcasting Station, Web-casting, Automatic Production Engine, TVML, Weblog

1. INTRODUCTIONThe television set has been a standard appliance in practically all households for decades and certainly TV

broadcasting is one of the most popular and familiar media. But television has always been a passive mediumjust for watching, and the prospect of users producing and distributing their own programs has seemed very

remote. This is in stark contrast to another medium that has become widely available, that of the Internet,where is quite easy for people to create and put their own web pages on line. Especially, with the growing

popularity of weblogs (blogs) and easy-to-use blog tools, it has become exceedingly easy for people withlittle or no expertise to create their own web content and make it available to others over the Internet atminimal cost. This inspired us to see if we might achieve this same level of user-friendly ease of creating anddistributing television program content over the Internet.

Although low-cost video cameras and desktop editing tools are popular consumer items, we are scarcelyable to see personal TV programs made by non-professionals. It seems reasonable to conclude that makingTV programs is still quite difficult for ordinary people just using consumer production tools. Looking at theexplosive growth in popularity and the spread of blogs over the last few years, indeed, we would expect to

see the same kind of remarkable growth in personal TV program and content production if user-friendly toolswere available to easily create and distribute TV program content.

We have been conducting a research aiming to achieve a new TV system that opens the way to anyindividual to produce and publish TV programs. In fact, we have succeeded in creating an environment that

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gives amateur users the ability to easily produce personalized TV programming content and distribute that

content over the Internet so it can be readily viewed by others by adopting the following approach:(1) TV programs can be broken up into three constituent partsscript, material, and program direction

that can be produced and distributed separately.

(2) To create a program, a user does not necessarily have to produce all three parts. For example, a programmight be created by just writing a script, and then linking the script with program directions that hasalready been produced and material that has already been distributed. This is helpful because programdirection is the most difficult and troublesome for amateur users.

(3) Then by uploading the program parts produced in Step (2) to a Content Management System (CMS), theprogram is easily made available to the public.

(4) To watch a TV program that has now been made available in Step (3), the necessary constituent parts aredownloaded from the CMS, and these parts are seamlessly integrated into a TV program on the clientside. The program is viewed using real-time computer graphics and a voice synthesizer.

This paper gives an overview of the fundamental concept of TV4U and its implementation that performsthese tasks in an integrated way. (1) TV4U is a TV platform that breaks programs into parts and distributesthose parts. TV4U consists of three prototype subsystems: (2) TV Creator is a tool for producing TV programscripts; (3) TV Server is the Content Management System; and (4) TV Browser is a system for viewing the

program contents.

2. RELATED WORKA blog is a frequently updated website where an author posts text and still images dedicated to a particulartopic. Podcasting [1] extends the basic blog concept by permitting users to make audio files (music or speech)available on the Internet, while videoblogs or vlogs [2] extend the blog format by including video images,

typically created and edited by the vlog's author. These capabilities are all very useful and bear strikingsimilarity to our work, for they essentially give users their own broadcasting stations enabling them to make

audio, video, and other kinds of media available on the Internet. One drawback is that the authors themselvesmust edit and create the audio programs for podcasting and the video programs for vlogs, and this can be adaunting task. So one additional characteristic of these blog-type sites is that are not generally easy to create

and maintain.A Public Opinion Channels (POC) [3] is a community-oriented information processing system that enables

community members to create TV program-like content that can be viewed on a Web browser. Users editknowledge cards consisting of text, graphic images, and other material, which are uploaded to a server andused as conversational content by computer graphics agents (avatars) that act and speak in place of their

creators. POCs too bear some similarity to our TV4U system in that individuals convert their own material toa TV program-like format, but the primary emphasis of POCs is broadcasting information and discussions

within a community. In addition, program directions are extremely limited, so the output is very differentfrom TV programs created using rich and varied program directions.

3. TV4U TECHNOLOGY BACK GROUNDWe use TVML (TV program Making Language) technology [4] for describing and playing back the final TVprograms of the proposed system. We also use the APE (Automatic Production Engine) technique

[5]for

describing the TV direction style. These technologies were developed by us for use in automatic TV programproduction. In this section, we explain these technologies and describe a new mechanism of TV productionusing them.

3.1 TVML

TVML is a computer language that can represent every aspect of a TV program script. Program scripts

written in TVML are played by a software component on a PC called the TVML Player. As illustrated inFigure 1, the TVML Player interprets the TVML script, then generates and plays back the TV program in real

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time by generating computer graphics (CG) models, CG characters that speak with synthesized voices, and

by playing video, still image, and audio files.Since the TVML represents load and positioning of the CG model, camera angles, lighting, and a host of

other settings in the script, this tends to make scripts rather complicated because these directions are mixed in

with the content in the script. We solved this problem by using direction style sheets (described in the nextsubsection) enabling the program directions and script to be separated in the production and distribution ofTV programs.

3.2 APE

The APE is essentially a kind of style sheet; the user enters simply script data describing the content, which isthe core of the program, into the APE, and the APE outputs a TVML script including program directions.The process is illustrated in Figure 2 where spoken lines, video files to be played in the program, and othercore data formatted in XML are added to a TVML script template, then output as a TVML script thatincludes program directions. This is analogous to the way style sheets are used on the Internet. Just as various

styles can be represented by CSS and XSLT style sheets describing core data in HTML, APE style sheetsgovern TV program direction styles in TV4U. Essentially, the APE consists of a program for inputting andoutputting text strings and XSLT and other style sheets. The XML-formatted script data input to the APE is

called the APE script.

(CG model loading and positioning , cameraangle and other settings)

...

movie:playfile(filename="shinkansen.mpg")

super:on(text="New Super Express Station")

character:talk(name=caster, text="A newsuper express station was opened in

Shinagawa.")...

A new super express

station was opened in

Shinagawa.

shinkansen.mpgNew Super Express StationA new super express station was opened in Shinagawa.

...

movie: playfile(filename="")

super: on(text="")

character: talk(text="")

Program direction(APE)

Script(APE Script)

A new super express

station was opened in

Shinagawa.

Figure 1. TVML script is transformed into a program

Figure 2. Use of APE

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4. THE TV4U PROTOTYPEBy treating the APE described in the previous section as the program direction component in TV4U, theelements of program production can be distributed over a network. For example, even if the person creating

the program knows nothing about program direction and design, she or he can nevertheless write a script andeasily produce a program by appropriating program directions and materials that have already beendistributed. Using the methodology stated above, we designed a new TV program circulation system namedTV4U that is able to provide great flexibility to ordinary people who want to express their information in aTV manner.

In the TV4U system, scripts consist of titles, lines of dialog, subtitles, and other tagged text as describedin the previous section, as well as references to material files that are used by the scripts. Materials consist of

still images, videos, audios, and various other media files, and are the data files referenced by scripts. Andfinally, program directions are style sheet APEs for converting to TVML and include computer graphic

models and character data used by the directions.

Fi ure 3. Overview ofthe TV4Us stem

APE Scripts Materials

APEs Metadata

TV Server

Distribution

The Internet

TV Creator

Uploader

Previewer

Script Editor

TV Browser

Program Searching Engine

TVML Player

Channel Zapping

ViewingProducing

Figure 3 shows an overview of TV4U. The TV Creator, TV Server, and TV Browser are all connected tothe Internet. Programs created by users on TV Creator are made available by uploading them to the TVServer, and the programs can be viewed on a TV Browser simply by accessing them on the TV Server. Wehave thus created a very user-friendly procedure for producing TV programs that can be made public on the

Internet and viewed with a browser analogous to the way web pages and blogs are created and made publiclyavailable for browsing.

4.1 Producing: TV Creator

The function of the TV Creator is to produce scripts for TV4U. It consists of three components: a scripteditor, a previewer, and an uploader.

Figure 4 shows a screenshot of the TV Creator. The script editor uses customized MS-Word becauseWord is currently the most popular document editor available for making scripts. The user first writes theprogram text in Word, then pastes APE style sheets, still images, audio, and video files into the Worddocument simply by dragging and dropping. The fact that particular text represents titles, lines,

Figure 3. Overview ofthe TV4U system


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superimposing, and so on is indicated by assigning styles (class attributes) where appropriate. The script

editor outputs HTML as an intermediate file, which is then converted into APE script by looking up the classattributes. Users can thus easily create a TV program by simply preparing a document in Word.

Fi ure 4. TV Creator editin screen

The TV Creator also features a previewer that allows the user to preview the TV program output in her or

his own local environment before uploading the program.Figure 5 shows the flow that is involved in generating a TV program from a TV Creator script. First, (a)

shows the editing screen of the Script Editor. The author writes the script, then adds APE style sheets and

other required materials by dragging and dropping these elements into the script. The fact that text is a title, asubtitle, a line of dialog, and so on is indicated with styles. This is saved in the APE script format shown in(b). The APE script is then uploaded along with any linked files to the TV Server.

To play the program, you download the uploaded APE script to your browser. This downloads the APEstyle sheet associated with the APE script, which is used to convert the APE script into a TVML script asshown in (c). Any material associated with the TVML script is downloaded, and the program is played on thebrowser as illustrated in (d).

Figure 4. TV Creator editing screen

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Cyber Style

BGM

BEIJ ING

Gugong

Now we will show you about the fastest growingcountry: China.

The first image is the Gugong palace in Beijing.

This is the most famous symbol, Heavenly Gate,Tiananmen.

Because China is a huge country, not only foreigntourists but also Chinese people visit Beijing from

various areas.You can see a lot of tourists wearing same-color caps.

BGM.mp3

BEIJINGGugong

Now we will show you about the fastestgrowing country: China.

The first image is the Gugong palace in

Beijing. image001.jpg

This is the most famous symbol, HeavenlyGate, Tiananmen.

Because China is a huge country, not onlyforeign tourists but also Chinese people visit Beijingfrom various areas.

You can see a lot of tourists wearing same-color caps.

image002.jpg

This is the Heavenly Gate Square view fromon Heavenly Gate.

Beijing air quality is often bad because ofrapid industrialization.

This square might be very large, but we

cant se everything.

APE

Audio file

Image file

(a) Editing by the TV Creator (b) APE script

(c) Conversion into TVML (d) Outputprogram

sound: open( name=bgm0, filename="BGM.mp3" )

sound: play( name=bgm0, repeat=0 )

super: on( type=drawing, drawingname=TITLE )character: talk(text=" Now we will show you about

the fastest growing country: China." )character: talk( text=" The first image is the Gugongpalace in Beijing." )

prop: openimageplate( name=image6, filename="image001.jpg", platesizeh=1.06, platesizev=0.78 )

character: talk(text=" This is the most famoussymbol, Heavenly Gate, Tiananmen.")character: talk(text=" Because China is a huge

country, not only foreign tourists but also Chinesepeople visit Beijing from various areas.")

character: talk(text=" You can see a lot of touristswearing same-color caps.")

title: select(type=imagefile, filename="image002.jpg")video: switcher(source=title)

character: talk(text=" This is the Heavenly GateSquare view from on Heavenly Gate.")

character: talk(text=" Beijing air quality is often bad

because of rapid industrialization. )

Figure 5. Program production flow in TV4U


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4.2 Distribution: TV Server

The user uploads three kinds of data: the APE script produced on the Script Editor, APE style sheets, andother material that are linked to the APE script.

The TV Server features a back-end database, and has two essential functions: it serves as a CMS bymanaging an index of programs that have been uploaded to it from TV Creators, and also functions as aHTTP file format content server. A channel is allocated to each user account, so that users can uploadprograms to their respective channels with a single click. The TV Server automatically keeps track of whereprograms are located (their URLs), so there is no need for users to remember or even be aware of URLs and

their corresponding paths.Just before a program is uploaded, the APE script is analyzed and the title and headline extracted from the

beginning of the scripts as a description, and these are uploaded separately from the program as metadata forthe program. Using this technique, the TV Server can also generate an RDF Site Summary (RSS) of metadataof the programs for each channel as an index.

4.3 Viewing: TV Browser

TV Browsers are equipped with a range of viewing style options, so users can customize the TV viewingexperience to their liking. By accessing the TV Server and looking up an RSS, the TV Browser can obtain alist of channels and a list of programs for each channel. By choosing a channel, the TV Browser can

sequentially play the programs stored on that channel just like regular TV programs. As illustrated in Figure6, users can also jump around among channels (channel zapping) and freely switch among programs on achannel in any random order.

Figure 6. Channel zapping

The TV Server also furnishes program metadata in RSS format, which enables users to watch asuccession of programs satisfying a keyword search, can watch a particular type or genre of programidentified by keyword filtering, or can view the most recently added programs by specifying a cut-off date.

The TV Browser thus accommodates both traditional TV mode viewing as well as Internet mode viewing,and the end-user can choose whichever mode best suits her or his purpose.

5. SYSTEM EVALUATIONAs stated in section 1, our final goal is to achieve a new TV system that makes it possible for anyone tocreate TV programs. A successful example illustrating the popularity of spontaneous expression byindividual people is the blog. We believe that the main reason for the popularity of blogging is easy-to-usecontent creation tools. Thus, the question of whether the overall TV4U system meets our purpose or notprincipally depends on the usability of TV Creator. To answer this question, we conducted user evaluation

trials on the TV Creator program production method.

5.1 Subjective Evaluation Test

The user evaluation trials were conducted with 12 subjects (six men and six women) who ranged in age fromtheir 20s to their 40s. The subjects were beginner to intermediate in their skill level on computers, but all

Figure 6. Channel zapping

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were at least capable of using a word processor.

The subjects were divided into two groupsGroup A and Group Band were asked to produce the sameprogram. Group A produced the program by directly editing a TVML script and was provided with TVMLediting tools, while Group B used the APE and wrote an APE script on TV Creator.

First, we provided both groups with a sample program written in TVML. Group B was also provided withAPE and an APE script of the sample program. We then gave the two groups a printed storyboard and anyother material files they would need to create a task program that was similar to the sample program and usedthe same instructions, but differed in content and story. The two groups were then asked to produce the tasksprograms.

In other words, Group A was told to convert the sample TVML script into the task program by directlyediting the sample TVML script, and Group B was asked to transform the sample APE script into the task

program by editing the APE script on TV Creator.The sample program was about one and half minutes long, and the content of the task program was about

the same. The content of both the sample and task programs was informational in nature, profiling a sportsfigure. The changes required to transform the sample program into the task program involved six spokenlines, altering superimposed text in three places, substituting stock images in two places, changing camerashots in three places, and changing the action of CG characters in two places. The subjects were also

provided with two hours of training in all of the system production techniques prior to the trial.In conducting the test we measured how long it took the two groups to produce the task programs, and

also evaluated the usability of the system by having the subjects fill out a questionnaire after the trial. Thequestionnaire was based on the semantic differential (SD) method and consisted of 25 sets of adjectiveswhich the subjects were asked to score on a scale of 7 (e.g., "Is this production method easy? / difficult?" "Isthe operation method easy to figure out? / hard to figure out?"). In addition, we also asked the subjects to jot

down their impressions in their own words. Figure 7 shows the average production times for the two groups.After subjecting the questionnaire results to principle component analysis, the results for the first

principle component revealed a heavier weighting of adjectives indicating that the production method waseasy production is easy," "it's easy to figure out the production system," etc. so we determined that thefirst primary component was "production method usability." The contribution of the first principlecomponent was 66%. Figure 8 shows the average first principle component scores for both Groups A and B.One can see that there is a significant difference between the two, and Group B determined that their

production method was substantially easier to figure out and use.

In their written assessments, subjects of Group B commented on the positive side that "Even though I amnot really used to using a computer, it was easy to familiarize myself with the program production because itresembles a game and I was surprised how intuitive and easy it was." And "It was fun because I was able toproduce a fairly decent program very quickly by just choosing a style and inputting some figures." On the

negative side, subjects of Group B observed that "Actions and spoken lines are treated in the samedescription, so it's confusing as to which comes first and the order of priority." "If the actions and spoken

lines could somehow be separated like on the storyboard, I think this would be a lot easier for novices tofigure out." And "I think the system might be more interesting and enjoyable if there was a greater range ofoptions in the camera-shots and the actions and expressions of the CG characters to choose from."

B: UsingTVCreator

43.3min

A: Using

TVML

117.3min

0 30 60 90 120 150

Production Time (min)

B: UsingTVCreator

A: Using

TVML

-8.00 -6.00 -4.00 -2.00 0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00

Figure 7. Average production time Figure 8. Production method usability


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5.2 Discussion

In comparing program productions using TV Creator with direct editing of TVML, we found that in terms ofproduction time required, the approach using TV Creator was 2.7 times more efficient on average. Even

considering that the subjects had samples to work from, the fact that complete program production noviceswere able to create a one-minute-long computer-graphics programs with sound in an average of 43 minutes isproof enough that the system has enormous promise and utility. Our fastest subject in this round of trialsfinished producing the task program in about 17 minutes, which of course could be further reduced once theproduction techniques were mastered.

The subjective evaluations of the subjects also revealed significant differences between the direct TVMLediting approach and the TV Creator editing approach. The most salient differences were:

(1) In order to directly edit TVML, one must learn how to use TVML commands and parameters. Bycontrast, with TV Creator there is no need to memorize detailed procedural commands, because the user

simply selects a style sheet-based template.(2) In TVML, the CG setup instructions, spoken lines, and other content elements are mixed together, and

this makes it hard to figure out where to edit even in exercises such as here where elements in theprogram are just being replaced. In TV Creator, the instructions and the content are kept separate, and

the instruction settings on TV Creator are concealed. This makes it extremely easy and efficient toreplace content elements as required by this task.

In interviews, several of the subjects expressed the view that a greater range of style options would offerusers greater power of expression and enjoyment. For the purposes of these trials, we only prepared templates

needed to produce the task programs, but the fact that several subjects mentioned this point suggests thatusers would like to see a greater variety of expressive capabilities. TV4U makes it easy to produce and

immediately view programs. It will be very interesting indeed if we can inspire and enable the will to createeven more with a greater range of expressive capabilities.

6. CONCLUSIONIn this paper, we described our successful implementation of TV4U, a user-friendly system enabling users toproduce and distribute their own personalized TV programs over the Internet that can be easily accessed andviewed by others. Trials were conducted to assess the usability of the system, and it was found that evenrelative novices were able to easily figure out how to use the system and produce their own programs.Building on this approach, we plan to develop tools for generating APE style sheets, and a system forseparating and integrating web-based scripts, materials, and program directions. The trials reported here only

addressed the usability of the program production system; the distribution and viewing aspects of the systemmust also be evaluated through trials.

REFERENCES

[1] Podcasting & VODcasting a Whitepaper

http://edmarketing.apple.com/adcinstitute/wp-content/Missouri_Podcasting_White_Paper.pdf

[2] Videoblogging.info

http://www.videoblogging.info/

[3] Fukuhara, T., Fujihara, N., Azechi, S., Kubota, H., and Nishida, T. "Public Opinion Channel: A network-based

interactive broadcasting system for supporting a knowledge-creating community", In R.J.Howlett, N.S.Ichalkaranje,L.C.Jain, and G.Tonfoni(eds.); Internet-Based Intelligent Information Processing Systems, World ScientificPublishing, chapter 7, pp.227-268, 2003.

[5] TVML Web Site

http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/tvml/

[4] Hayashi, M., Doke, M. and Hamaguchi, N. 2004. Automatic TV Program Production with APEs. 2nd Conference onCreating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing. Kyoto, Japan, pp. 20-25.

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