Designing Video Annotation and Analysis Systems

Although video has been used for many years to record data, few tools have been developed to help analyze video data. Current multimedia interfaces have severe cognitive and attentional limitations, reflecting technology-centred designs which have not profited from human factors theory and user-centred design. This paper discusses user requirements for video analysis, from which we derive a set of functional specifications. These specifications are useful for evaluating existing systems and for guiding the development of new systems. A number of existing systems are briefly described, as is the V ANNA Video ANNotation and Analysis system, which integrates video, non-speech audio, voice, textual and graphical data, and which incorporates emerging technology, user-centred design and human factors theory.