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Will Video Surfing Become Reality? 116

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-on-my-modem dept.
alinv writes "Australia's CSIRO has developed a multi-media browsing tool callled CMWeb, which makes surfing audio and video content as esy as text (view a screenshot here). The tool, called Continuous Media Web (CMWeb), enables user to activate a link within a video or audio file,and be taken to a related clip in another file, and then return to the original or follow further links into other subject areas, in much the same way they currently do with Web pages."
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Will Video Surfing Become Reality? More

Will Video Surfing Become Reality?

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  • No.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by benito27uk ( 646600 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:19AM (#6282990)
    Surely the video isn't big enough to stand on!

  • hang-10 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:20AM (#6282995)
    Will Video Surfing Become Reality?

    It already is, I call it "changing the channel."
  • It's not going to really take off until it's much, much easier for the average joe to make the content than it is now.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Arioch of Chaos ( 674116 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:22AM (#6283010) Journal
    Not that I want to be seen as too negative or anti progress but, why would I want to do that? The web is bloated as it is. All the animations and stuff that disturb you when you read a text :-/

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mmol_6453 ( 231450 )
      From the screenshot, it looks like it might be possible to forgo the audio and video, and just read the texts and click on the link. It looks like the web, repackaged to include visual aides.

      I expect it'd be great for online tutorials, though.
    • Are you sure that with all the technology people will still need reading skills?

  • Joke bait (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fruey ( 563914 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:23AM (#6283020) Homepage Journal

    This is rather like flash, but for video content rather than animated vector graphics. Maybe not even that. More like a video file + markup much like something which could be played in a specialised player, but superimposing links? Doesn't seem that revolutionary to me, the DVD format already allows for something like this - albeit in a more rigid form.

    However, the reason this is particularly interesting to the Slashdot crowd is that

    • Provides loads of possibilities for pr0n jokes
    • Screenshot will probably be more exciting for MacOS fans than pr0n itself, look at that lovely Aqua...
  • i'm sure i remember seeing hyperlinked video somewhere before.
    • Yeah, I'm having trouble seeing what's new about this.

      SMIL [w3.org] (easily used with RealVideo as well as others) accomplishes what this screenshot seems to show, and you can always embed video in an HTML page with text hyperlinks to different timestamps in that video or different video entirely.

  • I can see it already (Score:5, Funny)

    by TCM ( 130219 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:24AM (#6283025)
    *listens to some ambient*

    *totally chilled*

    yelling voice: OH AND BTW, IF YOU LIKE THIS TRACK, CLICK HERE FOR MORE!

    *gaaah*

  • xanadu (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Good to see more Xanadu [xanadu.net] ideas coming to fruition.

  • /. users rejoice! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by madmarcel ( 610409 )
    Someone has to say it:

    "Browsing through my pr0n mpeg collection will be never be the same again..."

  • video surfing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YomikoReadman ( 678084 ) <jasonathelenNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:26AM (#6283038) Journal
    well, from what I gather, this is not so much a way of surfing the net with video as it is a way to find related audio/video content. It kinda strikes me as a relational database, but all the objects are audio and video.

  • MPEG-4 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mericet ( 550554 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:26AM (#6283040) Homepage
    I don't see anything here I didn't already saw in the MPEG-4 specifications years ago.

  • Is this like video A HREF hyperlink? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:28AM (#6283046)
    Is this something like a video hyperlink?

    Watch Seinfeld, move that little mouse-knob now on your TV remote, click on the box of Junior Mints, and see a full Junior Mints commercial?
    • All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead.

      Just like product placement is now only sub-consciously perceived by most viewers.

      Take /. back in your time machine to the average person in the seventies or eighties (yeah, and a browser and the h/w to view it on...) and see if they can read it through the distraction of the hyperlinks.

      Ok, so maybe the "news" will be up-to date when you show it to them, but that wasn't the point...

  • User-Interface? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Advocadus Diaboli ( 323784 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:28AM (#6283051)
    enables user to activate a link within a video or audio file

    How do I activate a link in an audio file?
    On a visible interface (video or GUI) I can think about something that I can activate by a sort of "point & click" interface. But on an audio stream?
    Especially since audio is depending on time. Just think that you want to follow a link on the "bottom" of an audio file... should I wait until the link somehow passes by?

    Or do I have to think of something interactive with sppech input like
    Computer: "This article was first posted on Slashdot..."
    Me: "Stop here and tell me more about that slashdot thing"

    Sounds a little bit like "Star Trek" to me.

    • Audio games! (Score:5, Funny)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:31AM (#6283063)
      This reminds me of a friend years ago who came up to me and said "I've got a great idea. We know about video games. How about audio games? We should invent those".

      I've not heard from him since, but I am pretty safe to assume he is not a multi-billion dollar audiogame magnate at this time: no-one is.

      • Re:Audio games! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by twifkak ( 177173 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @09:09AM (#6283272) Journal
        Sorry to reply to a Funny with a serious comment, but just FYI, places [bavisoft.com] do [audiogames.net] make [gamegirladvance.com] videogames for the blind. Not like you should be expected to know that.. except gamegirladvance is required reading for any videogame enthusiast.

      • Re:Audio games! (Score:3, Funny)

        by jandrese ( 485 ) *
        I remember those "Audiogames". The ones that come out around Halloween time and have ads on TV. Call mumble-mumble and play a game, only $2.99 a minute, get your parent's permission, etc... There is a picture of what looks like an 8 bit NES game in the background with a character going between levels of some side scroller and a voice over about fighting ghosts and stuff. I don't know if they're still around or not, it sounded pretty lame to me (and I was 8 at the time).

      • SCTV (Score:2)

        by British ( 51765 )
        There was an episode of SCTV with "audiogames". It featured Jerry Todd hitting buttons on a remote control, which made the guns go off(asteroids-like game). There was also a baseball game. Hilarious commercial.

      • Re:Audio games! (Score:2, Informative)

        by bickerdyke ( 670000 )
        Had that idea a few years ago too. Never tried it, even though it would have been quite simple: Cram together a Text-to-Speech engine, Dragon Dictate and an old infocom adventure. Next step: Replace the TTS with prerecorded text from a professional actor.
      • Thanks for all the "insightful" responses. I did not know that real audiogames existed, and after my friend proposed the idea, I thought about it for a time and figured that audio "action-arcade" games were not possible.

    • Re:User-Interface? (Score:5, Funny)

      by popeyethesailor ( 325796 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:56AM (#6283187)
      Remember "Punch the monkey and get a free penis!".

      This will only be harder ;)

      • Re:User-Interface? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Damn, I've been doing it wrong all these years.

        I was wondering why I haven't received my free monkey yet.

  • Not useful.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by chendo ( 678767 )
    I don't think this would be useful to anyone except people who make online encyclopedias. Many online encyclopedias use a video-text format for conveying multimedia information to the user, but this wouldn't be feasible to the average user.

  • patents (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 )
    and of course, this fuck will be granted a patent, just because nobody else bothered to develop something wich will be useless for the next 20 years

  • CISRO? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organsation). Thanks. And a bit of trivia.. they're the only organisation with their own .au second-level domain "csiro.au".

  • Parallel surfing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by heikkile ( 111814 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:38AM (#6283090)
    I don't know about Joe Sixpack, but when I surf the net, I have a couple of browsers open, each with multiple tabs. Interesting links are opened in another tab, which may (or may not) get quickly closed again, when I get around to looking at it. No website can expect to get my full undivided attention!

    This would really suck with video, where you have to notice the links at the right time. And what about audio? Will the other pages continue making noises quietly in the background? Wait for their turn? overpower anything else I may be listening?

    • "This would really suck with video, where you have to notice the links at the right time."

      Don't worry, once spammers get ahold of this technology they'll make sure you are aware of when the link is there...hell...they might even 'click' it for you if your security is lax enough.

    • Which is why it'll probably never become common on the web. It doesn't really seem to be a replacement for static content, but it could provide some added value to applications where video is already used. Having said that, I still don't think it'll become common on the internet.

      It *would* be a really great way to handle keynote speeches from conferences, etc. Like, if Lessig is lecturing, and mentions an historic copyright incident you hadn't heard of, you could click a link and it would pause the vide

  • Starship Troopers.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by adamofgreyskull ( 640712 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:39AM (#6283097)
    "Would you like to know more?"

  • Connection speed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lokist ( 596852 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:41AM (#6283103)
    The majority of the world (hey its changing)is still on dial-up... Im out here in the middle of the country so I doubt video surfing will happen over here any time soon.
  • For the most part, this will only make for very annoying ads that suck up gobs of bandwidth. Just look at what they have done with flash animation?

  • human brain's capacity? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:48AM (#6283132) Homepage
    i am sure we will have enough advance technology to making video surfing a reality, but what about human brain's capacity to process and digest the information given to us in this mode. we are already facing a Information Overload as it is. Moreover the brain's capacity is becomming smaller, due to in-digestion of information (your brain and stomach work in a similar fashion,to process and retain information), and less time for thinking and comptemplation.
    A good book to read about mind and information processing is Steven Pinker's "How Mind Works"
    And I for one do not wanna see any pop-up banners in video surfing. :)
    • Moreover the brain's capacity is becomming smaller, due to in-digestion of information (your brain and stomach work in a similar fashion

      Dude, you have been reading too much popular science.

    • I've never liked the phrase information overload. As I see it, there are two possible states regarding information. Having a whole lot of it, or not having enough. If I were given the choice, I will opt for the former over the latter everytime.
      I don't mean to rip on stonebeat, but "Information Overload" is a phrase tailor made for a government censor, who wants to cut back our access to information, while at the same time, telling us it's for our own good.
      I know, offtopic, I'm sorry, but it's a pet peeve

  • How about XML? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by randomErr ( 172078 ) <.ervin.kosch. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:50AM (#6283140) Journal
    Here my GPL'ed non-LPR 2Â thoughts.

    Why not create a simple XML language that could be associed with the embedded video on a webpage? Example:
    <embed src="myvideo.mpg" width=740 height=480>
    <hotspot timecode="00:00,07:12" cordinates="10,25,180,360" href="http://slashdot.org">
    <hotspot timecode="05:01,09:12" cordinates="80,1,90,85" href="http://www.everything2.com">
    </embed>

    • Re:How about XML? (Score:2, Informative)

      by rogue_gambit ( 26909 )
      You probably want SMIL by [w3.org] w3c.

      And it has been a w3c standard since 1998, so nothing new there...

    • SMIL (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is already on the w3.org [w3.org] (the people who brought you HTML and XML standards) website, and it is called SMIL.
  • It's the CSIRO.
  • Text does not have to be read from start to finish to provide a satisfactory result to the viewer - that's why it's so good on the web. Video is intended to be viewed from start to finish - I can't imagine clicking the back button to finish watching Austin Powers while I just finished watching the original to get the joke reference. Ok, maybe once or twice but more than that and you'll spend countless hours infront of the TV going from video to video and never really acc.....oh wait.....nevermind.
  • It's so completely extraneous and useless that it will be commonplace and have wide acceptance like anything else that hits the lowest common denominator in our species.

    Now if I can just think up of an invention stupid enough and completely useless, I can rake it in... hmmm...

  • Easy! (Score:3, Funny)

    by krumms ( 613921 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @08:52AM (#6283160) Journal

    ...makes surfing audio and video content as esy as text

    Which obviously won't be easy enough for the average /. ed ;)

  • Wow, reading this article you would have thought the average "video-surfer" was on an OC3...

    Maybe 5-10 years from now, but not now... not this way...
  • It's the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation) [csiro.au].

    One of the most important publicly funded organisations in the country. When they finally get some credit for their work it would be nice to get the name right.

  • CSIRO (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't wanna come across all slashdot or anything but thats....

    CSIRO (see www.csiro.au)

    not CISRO (see www.cisro.com.au)

    'Syro', not 'Sisro'...

  • just as soon as FMV games get back in swing.
  • And here I am thikning about a big screen video projection screen with a virtual wave and a long or short board on hydraulics and possibly a powerglove or a headset!!!

    Silly me...
    Although come on...it's better than the technology in the article!

    Rob
  • Surely that is CSIRO and screenshot?
    Or is the perview button not wroking?
  • Videos, with subtitles. CLicking on subtitles takes you to new pop-over windows. Switching to one of these freezes other windows. Close a main window, the one you come back to starts-up again.

    Now _this_ would make video surfing fun. Something like the 'information videos' we see on MTV, but with hyperlinks.
  • My initial thoughts were as most (bandwith, content, Feh, etc)

    but then I thought well it has to start somewhere, hands up all of you that were on the internet 10 years ago (ok bad audience to ask in!) but you get the picture

    I think in 10 or so years time everyone will be wondering how they survived without their inter-thing-a-mabob that does everything and will probably be talking about if going to the local implant shop to get the latest wotsit 'uploaded' is a good idea or will take up too much space.

  • This kind of thing is great for "real" internet users, by which I mean people paying for broadband and just surfing web pages.

    The rest of us have already got however much bandwidth we have pretty much saturated with p2p clients. If we had more bandwidth we'd just download more p2p stuff and faster.

    I know that I personally am not going to have loads of bandwith just sitting there waiting to be used for video surfing, it'll be being used for p2p.

    Ok, it is at this point that someone is going to suggest traf

  • Sounds Like VRML (Score:3, Insightful)

    by David_AH ( 683069 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @09:33AM (#6283519)
    Remember when VRML was going to change the Internet? No more text just big 3d world with avatars running around everywhere. When was the last time you visited a VRML site? I don't understand why so many people want to augment or replace simple text and graphics. Sure flash and video and audio add to the web and are great for some applications, but text is trhe real killer app on the web. It is easy and cheap to produce, and thanks to services like babelfish it is easy to translate. Not to mention the problems of getting acurate search results just based on descriptions of viedo or audio.
    • Is an emersive 3D enviroment the equivalent of a 2D page? Only as a book is to a play or movie I suppose. Movies don't invalidate books, neither does 3D invalidate, replace or surplant 2D. They can, do and will coexist. I just think 3D really hasn't happened for the same reason other real time real world tasks, ie, voice, face or pattern recognition, aren't mainstream yet. Imho, we simply can't handle the complexity either on the desktop nor on the net, yet. VRML and other standards allow us 3D worlds, are
    • I think you are missing the point entirely. This product does not promote a new interaction technique the way 3D does to 2D. It is intended to apply common interaction techniques (searching, hyperlinking) to a medium that does not currently support those techniqes. The goal of this product is to provide a way to search and hyperlink to specific segments of audio/video within other segments of audio/video (think of finding and jumping to a particular chapter on your favorite DVD - you can't do that on the

  • This has existed for years (Score:3, Informative)

    by James Youngman ( 3732 ) <jay.gnu@org> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @10:16AM (#6284021) Homepage
    The Microcosm [soton.ac.uk] system had this feature (hyperlinks in videos) in 1993, possibly earlier. It even worked with videodisks...

    Not by the way that I really rated Microcosm, it was really quite buggy and was overtaken by HTML, which of course turned out to be the category-killer in the hypertext arena.

  • Video and audio surfing will go they way of push-technology. If it's not asynchron it will not work as a "surfing" media.

    Just my 0.02â

  • So, that TV thing on my desk would be likeâ¦. my TV thing in my entertainment center! And my MOUSE would be likeâ¦â¦ my REMOTE CONTROL! This is a GREAT advancement for our civilization!
  • buy a Mac if you want to impress people with screenshots.
  • ....when it was called "channel surfing"

  • IBM had this in OS/2 back in the mid 90's (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Locutus ( 9039 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @11:23AM (#6284661)
    I had heard that IBM had this in it's OS/2 media player way back around the Warp 4 days. OS/2 shipped with a bunch of multimedia players and it was said that they had clickable regions in a video stream working.

    I never saw it but then again, I never saw OS/2 for the PPC and IT existed. ;)

    LoB
  • "Do you want to know more?"
  • Odd though - the other posters are right in that it sounds alot like SMIL, but since QT 5 (for PC and Mac) you can embed Flash layers on the view as overlays.

    What I see is:
    * Streaming video
    * Triggered text tracks
    * Links (either external, internal, scheduled or overlayed/flash)

    Nothing new, but maybe I should download it first and then try it, and then comment...um, wait. Nevermind. Forgot where I was...
  • Either a slightly more advanced form of flash, HTML animations, or those interactive Java applets. Already we've got nice Java applets where you can browse cars interiors, houses, etc - perhaps video could be much the same except in a less of a "static scene" fashion.

    How about internet TV? We're fast enough to manage that now in many locations - a nice subscription model to proper internet channels (more like real cable/sat channels than a lot of current 'clip' crap is) would be nice - in which case you c

  • Been there done that (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SPeW ( 466398 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @07:21PM (#6289610) Homepage Journal
    Audio and video surfing is already here. It's called Winamp 2.91 [winamp.com]. Yeah it's got shoutcast [shoutcast.com] built in and now a new thing called Internet TV [winamp.com] which is basically Nullsoft Public Acces TV [nullsoft.com]. It's starting to catch on too, there are a number of shows ranging from someone getting drive thru at taco bell to shows like Cartoon Network's Auqa Team Hunger Force. So who needs cable when you have a broadband connection.

  • Caps? (Score:2, Funny)

    by ic3p1ck ( 597610 )
    How ironic, this coming from Australia - the land of the internet cap!

  • quicktime vr,,, (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vaughn Anderson ( 581869 ) on Wednesday June 25, 2003 @02:10AM (#6291866)
    Bah... this is just regurgitated quicktime VR, which is hypercard with nice video...

    Is this really any different from a web page with the links on the side instead of in the video?

    Bob: Hey, hit stop! Rewind, rewind, click there, click there!

    Fred: I'm tryin, I'm tryin dernit!

    Bob: No, no, not there, forward forward, No, stop, backup, backup, click now click now before the link disappears in the next scene! AGGGH!

    (*Dislaimer: this is a joke, I didn't even read the article*)

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