MediaGrid - Distributed Analysis of Multimedia Data

Through the creation of a media-oriented grid community, successful, sustainable services are to be established for the different areas of the media and content industry. This will require an efficient infrastructure for the analysis and distribution of extensive  media inventories (audio and video data). Furthermore, the existing D-Grid environment (based on the Globus GT4 middleware) will be used and enriched with various methods of media analysis, in order to enable the shared processing of media data. Multiple analysis services will be made available on the MediaGrid infrastructure for different end-users, which they can use directly and integrate into their environments. By the end of the project, the MediaGrid environment should represent one of the most flexible and user-friendly resources for end-users of media-relevant computational services, which can be used simply and cost-effectively by media companies to carry out computationally-intensive processing steps. 

To achieve the project’s objectives, various technical developments need to be made in order to realise distributed processing of media data. Through the MediaGrid services developed in the project, simple and quick access to digitalised and distributed multi-media will be facilitated. Due to the rapidly increasing quantity of audiovisual data, there is a growing need for automated analysis and/or opening of the data, to make searching and further use of it possible. Contrary to conventional, text-based search engines, the challenge lies in ensuring that the relevant metadata can be extracted from soundtracks and video data. Complex and computationally-intensive analysis processes from the areas of speech, audio, image and video recognition are provided for this purpose. These processes for media analysis are integrated into the D-Grid middleware environment and adapted to produce optimal analysis accuracy. The Globus Toolkit (GT4) is used as the grid middleware. The different media analysis services are added and made available to the end-user on this basis.
 
From an end-user perspective, it is necessary to conceive and develop new and existing applications in such a way that these services are easily accessible on the MediaGrid. In reaching as many different segments in the media industry as possible, more end-users will access the MediaGrid services. Within the project’s framework, two pilot applications will be developed for end-users, which can be accessed in the decentralised MediaGrid infrastructure. The first application deals with a search environment, which will be used for opening AV content from media documentaries.  With the second application, the TV production tool from GRID TV will be expanded to allow simpler and quicker access to digitalised multi-media inventories. New TV productions are supported by automated analysis processes with user behaviour and content synchronised to facilitate improved coverage. With the development of end-user applications, there is coordination between development work and the provision of MediaGrid services. Both applications are used by end-users during the pilot stage (ArchivInForm, ProSiebenSat.1, GRID TV, Science TV) and MediaGrid services will be accessed in the process.

The creation and reliable operation of these services is the focus of the work by GRID TV GmbH, the University of Marburg and Fraunhofer IAIS, which will develop grid infrastructure consisting of computers and/or computer clusters in three locations. 

An important strategic project objective is establishing the MediaGrid community. Here, it is necessary to build both horizontal and vertical technical and socio-economic structures to ensure long-term use of the project results. The vertical network is arranged through the interaction of computer centre services with end-users. The cost-effective operation and use of media computing services will be made possible by means of building attractive business models,. The development of further application models is another key concern of this project. From a starting point of basic business models (computing services versus costs), more complex application models will be developed as part of the project. For this, surveys and an analysis of the media industry will be carried out. Along with the network of end-users from the media sector with media computing services, it is also worthwhile increasing the level of interrelation between end-users. The collaborative use of MediaGrid makes it possible to use distributed and heterogeneous AV inventories in conjunction with each other.

Project's website:   http://www.mediagrid-community.de

Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, D-Grid Initiative

Contact: Ernst Juhnke, Dominik Seiler