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(17-06-2005)
Now it is for real! It is not so that this system will ever reach the mass market, but there is a
small, and (devoted) user community around the world! Very pleasant, but it also puts some demands on
continual development, support, appropriate documentation and so forth. Not easy to coop with when the
finansial situation of the project is limited (none so far).
Even an open source project requires some resources to live on. Even if the actual programming is made
voluntarly, you have to have costly hardware and software to test and build on. It also requires persons to
produce documentation, provide support etc, at least if things should work smoothly. And with real users,
there are certain basics, in my opinion.
The biggest news on this page is that I have turned the download section upside down. The latest versions is
now on top. They are likely most interesting to most users (the program is not so massive that the newest
versions require more computer than the older versions). I have also thrown away some old versions that hardly
anyone will miss.
The latest version is 0.3.5.1 and mark a starting point for the development from beta version to a sharp
1.0 version!
Download
I started with this project after initial contacts with two researchers at University College of Teaching,
Tore West (in Swedish),
and Anna-Lena Rostvall (also in Swedish)
at the department of didactic design.
The groups research deals a lot with
analyzes of video, capturing music lessons. The analyzis is of the detailed interaction between teacher and student.
As a tool they uses a Quick Time player and an Excel sheet, connected by Apple Script.
As a consequence, they are constrained to work and demonstrate on Apple Macintosh. There is also problems when
moving data and video to other computers (even though it is Mac). It in turn makes it hard to present the
analyzis and video to others, e g teacher students.
The main problem as I see it is that the original solution uses three components and one of
them is built into the operating system (Mac OS X). The requirement to use three components is
in itself a cause that makes the system not-so-easy-to-use. A solution is therefor to build
a dedicated tool, with platform independed technology.
The application is build in Java. It uses Quick Time as media container, which narrow the platforms
supported to Windows and Mac OS X. The difference is that the user need to start only one application,
all work is made in one application, the integration makes a lot of tasks easier to perform, and the
fact that data, logic and presentation is separated opens up the possibility for collaborative work
on the same data, change of storage and file format etc.
Short history
The work with the Video Analyzer has from version 0.0.1.7 up to version 0.0.2.4 been done as a project on
a course at the Royal Collage University of Technology in Stockholm. The team members have been myself
(Björn Johansson), Erland Hermodsson, Victor Galaz and Afshin Mohammadi.
Version 0.0.1.7 has the following new features
- The table covers the entire window
- The movie is displayed as a floating window that can be hidden, visible och placed arbitrary on the
screen or on a different monitor
- The performance of the movie playback is good even with large files
Version 0.0.2.4 cannot do the same things as 0.0.1.7 But:
- When the application starts, a project is created with the name "Untitled"
- It is possible to save a project with a name of choice (required is the extension ".xml", the
project data is saved as xml-documents)
- It is possible to open the project saved earlier
- It is possible to save a modified project
- It is possible to add any number of analyze sessions, that is work with several movies in a project.
Each movie is connected to an analyze session.
- It is possible to switch between sessions
- It is possible to create session events, that is mark parts of the movie
- Session events is created when the user mark the starting point of a new event. Duration and
starting point for surrounding events is automatically recalculated.
- Each event created is sorted in the right order depending on start time
- It is possible to delete session events
Version 0.3.1.3. The pane on the left list all movie in this project. It is easy
to switch movie. The movie window can be hidden to view more of the analyze table. Codes is shown with color and tool tip
Version 0.3.1.3 is the first "mature" version, where the most important parts is implemented.
The work with this version has been done as a project in the course RUP and UML, applied at KTH.
The team member has been myself (Björn Johansson), Tony Lindström, Victor Galaz and Afshin Mohammadi.
A very big THANK YOU to these guys. Fantastic to work with!
It is still a kind of "beta". Added to the functionality in 0.0.2.4 is:
- The possibility to add or remove session event properties on every session event in a project
- The properties is of either the type "Transcription" or the type "Note"
- A Transcription is classified with a user defined "Code"
- When a Code is applied to a Transcription, the color of the Code is shown as a background color in the Transcription cell in the overview table
- The possibility to add or remove Codes
- When the user clicks (selects) a row in the overview table, the corresponding part in the movie is played.
Makes transcription much more efficient
This is an "open source" project following the GPL license. Therefore both compiled code, source code and
documentation is available for download.
About the documentation up to version 0.3.4.0. Most is written in Swedish. But all comments and source code
is in english. The manual is entirely written in english. And from version 0.3.4.9 parts of the other documentation
is now translated into english. From now on each new contribution to documentation will be in english and I will
continue to translate the active documentation to encurage other to join the development.
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