The objective of the PorTiVity project is to develop and experiment a complete end-to-end platform providing Rich Media Interactive TV services for portable and mobile devices. Interactivity is based on a moving objects level in the TV-programme. The whole system consists of an authoring tool which offers methods for fast annotation and navigation, the playout component for preparation of the data to send and the required software for the handheld receiver to present data and for the interaction with the user.

Major task of the Institute of Information Systems & Information Management is the implementation of authoring tools. Therefore an existing MPEG-7 annotation tool will be adjusted which allows a description of the object positions in the video stream with lower user effort. The aim is to minimize the number of positions in the video, where the user has to manually specify the object image region. The object positions in the video are determined by ‘Video Object Tracking’ and by automatic object identification in different video segments (‘Object-Redetection’).

With a further tool which will be developed in the course of this project, the proper interactive video programme is generated using MPEG4-LASER format, based on the video MPEG-7 description. Therewith it is possible to define the interaction for annotated objects, to show menus in the video or to define a programme logic (eg: for games).

See also: porTiVity-Website