Video fingerprinting eases searches

The explosive growth of video on the Internet calls for new ways of sorting and searching audio-visual content, according to Cordis. A team of European researchers has developed a groundbreaking solution that is finding commercial applications.

Most video search technologies currently rely on semantic annotation in which videos have to be manually tagged with keywords so they can be found via a text-based search.

A faster alternative is to use software to automatically extract snippets of a video and create a unique identifier based on a variety of audio-visual features, such as scene, motion and music changes. These so-called digital media fingerprints can then be used to index and search full audio-video content.

Less than six months after releasing the PEN E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera, Olympus proves evolutionary change can happen incredibly fast by releasing the E-P2 with even more power and performance, says GadgetReview.

The new PEN, like the E-P1, is the world's smallest 12.3-megapixel interchangeable lens system with in-body image stabilisation.

It blends the high-quality still images like that of a DSLR with high-definition video, stereo Linear PCM audio recording and in-camera creativity inside an ultra-portable body.

Scalable video coding (SVC) is the latest standard gaining traction in the videoconferencing world, states PR-USA.

In a study by Wainhouse Research, SVC is compared to the H.264 Baseline Profile used in traditional videoconferencing systems.

Based on actual side-by-side comparisons of multiple devices, it was concluded that H.264 SVC videoconferencing systems can provide the ability to host video calls on lower cost, loss-prone IP networks, including the Internet, with equal or better quality than that of traditional systems.