A Tcl/Tk-Based Video Annotation Engine

The population of a video database requires tools for manipulation and annotation of raw video data. Characteristic of this requirement is the need to satisfy many disparate video-based application domains. In this paper we describe the design and development of a video annotation engine called Vane, intended to address the issue of domain-independent video annotation. Rather than relying on a single, general data model and application interface, we developed a dynamic interface and data model using the Tcl/Tk environment and SGML document type definitions (DTDs). This approach allowed us to implement an intuitive graphical user interface application that is easily portable to different systems. The tool is currently in use to annotate a video archive comprised of educational and news video content at Boston University.