December 19, 2006

Deep Tagging, Linking and Searching

Deep tagging of video clips may not grab you as the most exciting topic in the world, but it could prove invaluable for everybody involved in dance.

In this post, I'd like to define "deep tagging." Explain why it's important for dance and describe a handful of ways that it can be used. Plus, I'll link to posts I've written earlier about tagging. And then, at the end of this post, you'll find links to video applications that support deep tagging or offer related functionality.

First, some definitions and then I'll follow with possible applications dance.

Definitions

Tagging: Most social media sites allow users to "tag" multimedia content. For example, if you upload a video to YouTube, you can add keywords that describe the content you've just added. For a dance video, you may use the tags "dance" and "modern." The benefits of user tagging are that large numbers of files are quickly tagged and it becomes possible for visitors to search for videos by these keywords. The opposite of user tagging would be if a website publisher took sole responsibility for categorizing all content so that users could then conduct searches. With this latter approach, there is not a lot of flexibility, it takes a lot of time to implement, and users don't get to structure content in the way they want to.

Deep Tagging: If you go beyond adding tags to describe an entire video, and start tagging individual sections of a video, you have deep tagging. There are a number of video applications that allow you to do this. So you could tag just an "arabesque" in a dance video by tagging it "arabesque". Now users who are looking for a video example of an arabesque don't have to watch an entire video just to find this specific movement. They simply plug-in the word that describes the movement they are looking for and will be taken to the specific location within the video.

Deep Searching: I've just described an example of "deep searching" above. Instead of conducting a search for keywords or tags that describe an entire video, you conduct searches for tags that describe specific sections of a video and then get taken to the desired portion of the video clip. This saves a lot of time because you don't have to watch a five-minute video to find a five-second section that you happen to be looking for.

Deep Linking: Once you've tagged a portion of a video or found a tagged section of a video you find interesting, you may want to share the link with others. So you could put this link on your website or blog, or embed it in an email message. Now when users click on the link, they will be taken not to the start of the video but to the portion of the video that you want them to watch.

Deep Commenting: Many video sites let users add their own comments about videos. A more powerful tool is if users can place comments (text, audio and, even, video) at designated points within a video. So if a dance critic wanted to discuss their thoughts about a 10-second section of a dance clip, they could do that so that viewers can see exactly what the writer is discussing.

Deep Tagging Possibilities for Dance

Most spheres of dance would benefit by embracing deep tagging:

- Educating Dance Audiences

In my post "Educating Dance Audiences with Video Annotation" I discuss a number of specific video applications that can be used to add deep tags to sections of dance videos. By using such tools, dance audiences could learn significantly more about dance in almost no time.

- New Approaches to Dance Criticism

In my post "Ushering in a New Era in Multimedia Dance Criticism" I offer my thoughts on how dance critics can transform how they write about dance by incorporating tagged video clips into their stories.

- Enhancing Promotional Videos

If you put a video on your website, blog or MySpace page of an upcoming performance, you may want to consider deep tagging this video to help give audiences more background and insight about this work.

I think it would be great if I could read about an upcoming performance and then after reading each paragraph, I could click on a link to watch a section of a larger video that corresponds to the text I had just read. Words, by themselves, can never do justice when video is available. With deep tagging tools, there is no reason why this cannot be done.

- Opportunities for College and University Dance Programs

I've never taken a college course in dance, but any university program devoted to the study of dance history and choreography has to provide students with the opportunity to learn about the evolution of dance styles and the influence that different eras of dance had on subsequent periods.

Standard approaches to studying this historical progression of dance forms and styles must be pretty time consuming and occasionally tedious. So while traditional research may always be required - going to archives and libraries that house videos of important performances, for example - there are new ways to perform similar types of research that will probably prove equally worthwhile if not even more helpful.

My suggestion may sound impractical, but please consider it for a moment. Around the globe there are a large number of dance programs at colleges and universities. There are thus thousands upon thousands of students studying dance choreography and composition and making videos of their work. These dance pieces cover all types and styles of dance that have been performed over the centuries.

So why not create a shared, online video archive of all student dance videos from all participating dance programs from around the world? Every year thousands of new videos would be added to this database. And dance students participating in these programs would have unlimited access to this online video library.

Now add deep tagging, searching, linking and commenting capabilities to this video library. You will now have one of the most powerful educational tools ever created for the study of dance. And you could even add a video editing and remixing tool so that students could combine sections of different videos into new videos to show progressions, tell stories and provide new insights about the relationship of different dance forms and styles.

- The Global Dance Project

In a post I wrote, "Global Historical Dance Video Project," I described my desire to see a large-scale initiative to create an online library of dance videos that showcased all styles and forms of dance.

In many ways this project is a public version of what I just described when discussing how dance programs at colleges and universities can collaborate with each other.

In this instance, I'm talking about a completely public, open project. There might be a centralized database in which users would create profiles about dance videos that were stored somewhere on the web. Users would then be able to tag each video or parts of each video so that other users could easily linked to specific styles and forms of dance.

It would be great if this type of video library were created. Since I recently started swing dancing, I'd like an easy way to compare and understand different styles of swing dance and get a better idea of what the historical progression of styles has been over the past 80 years or so. As things stand on the web today, it is just about impossible to find good videos that show the difference between the Jitterbug, Lindy and other forms of swing dance.

Tools and Technologies

I'm going to write new posts soon about various video applications, but I wanted to provide some initial links here:

- In the post I mentioned above, "Educating Dance Audiences," I link to a number of online video applications that allow you to add deep tags, links and comments to your videos.

- In addition to applications listed in the above story, you can also take a look at SceneMaker and Coull.tv.

- To make video remixes/mashups, take a look at Jumpcut and Eyespot. Also, take a look at this Dove mashup competition web site that has what looks like a good set of customized video editing and mashup tools. (You can't use these tools for your own purposes. I just think Dove did a good job).

- For online collaborative video editing, you can explore SyncVUE.

- The best possible development would be if somebody created a visual search tool for dance videos. For example, say you had a 5-10 second video clip of yourself performing a dance phrase and you wanted to find other dance videos that included similar movements. You could enter this video clip into a search engine and on the results page you would see a list of dance videos that included matches. By match I mean that the videos contained a sequence of movements that were almost identical to or relatively similar to the sequence in your 5-10 second video. I don't know what research has been done in this area, but it would be great to find out what has been done to date. In the static image world (photos), one site I know of is Riya that is used for matching images of products, people and objects. So you can select a person's face in a picture and then find all pictures in which this same person appears.

Posted by Doug Fox on December 19, 2006 2:47 PM

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