--- Forwarded Message from Trip Kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]> ---
>Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:20:25 -0400
>From: Trip Kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>Organization: Yale Center for Language Study
>User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (Windows/20070326)
>To: Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum
<[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: #8561.3 (!) Time Line in Audio Players
Derek Roff wrote:
> The ability to reliably replay the last few seconds of a media file
> (problem 2, and partly, 4) is the feature that I wish for most often,
> both in my own listening/viewing and when I am making presentations.
> To address this, I would replace the dot or rectangle that indicates
> the current "playhead" position in most media players with something
> giving accurate and consistent control over small time changes. I
> imagine a moving rectangle, containing three vertical lines. The
> center line would represent the current playhead position. Clicking
> on the line to the left or right of center would jump the playhead
> back or forward five seconds. Clicking on the left and right edges of
> the moving rectangle would jump the playhead back or forward ten
> seconds. This playhead rectangle would be the same size for all
> media files, regardless of length. I imagine that this would give
> useful, consistent control of an important function with a very
> simple (for the user) modification in the interface of the media
> controller.
Derek:
Are you thinking of the travelling rectangle as a magnifying glass, or
as a widget with time represented within it the same way it's
represented outside?
Jumping off from your post, it occurred to me that a possible audio
player interface is suggested by MIT's Timeline
(http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/) JavaScript application.
I've become quite enamored of this app lately, but have not quite come
up with the right implementation, though project management timelines
have come close. But for an audio player, it's worth noting several
features: Multiple bands of time can be represented; within one band,
time can be represented in compressed or expanded states, and can be
shown in multiple levels of compression*; and salient points in the
timeline can be indicated in multiple ways. This would accommodate
having the entire audio timeline in one band, with an expanded,
annotated timeline in another.
I think this would be a fantastically rich interface for listening to
and annotating audio, but I don't know off the top of my head how to
implement the necessary interactivity. However, it looks like MPEG-7 is
a good start (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-7). Once upon a time,
IBM was working on a tool for annotating audio-visual material in
MPEG-7: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/multimodalannotation
Before that they had a video-only annotator:
http://www.research.ibm.com/VideoAnnEx/
Tk
* In the JFK assassination timeline (the default example), one band goes
from time intervals of weeks to hours to 10 minutes to 5 minutes and
back, while the other goes from months to weeks to hours to 15 minutes
and back.
--
Trip Kirkpatrick
SysAdmin / Sr. Programmer
Center for Language Study
e: [log in to unmask]
w: http://www.cls.yale.edu/
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