8. Conclusion

This chapter has discussed how the World Wide Web age defines new opportunities and challenges for video database applications. The prevalent characteristics of the World Wide Web age were summarized as:

Heterogeneity and large network/device diversity
Interactivity and Dynamic Content Generation
Personalization and Sharing of Information and Experiences
Mobility and Ubiquity

The chapter further discussed some tools and techniques being used to implement two interactive video database applications to deal with these challenges. A content assembly technique was described for dealing with network and device diversity; an interactive video model and a personalization technique was described; and a technique for sharing interactive video content was described. This chapter also explained how these techniques were used in two interactive video database applications being developed at Siemens Corporate Research.

Interactive video database applications are still very much in their infancy. Developers of such applications are facing a situation where a number of tools and techniques exist but where there is lack of a solid usability data that can act as guidelines as to when and how to use the various techniques. Hence, more R&D work is needed to evaluate the usability of the techniques discussed in this chapter and to refine the techniques and tools presented.