Mobile Media Metadata: The Future of Mobile Imaging

Abstract

The devices and usage context of consumer digital imaging are undergoing rapid transformation from the traditional camera-to-desktop-to-network image pipeline to an integrated mobile imaging experience. Since 2003, more camera phones were sold than digital cameras worldwide; since 2004, 5 megapixel cameraphones with optical zoom and camera flash have been on the market. The ascendancy of these mobile media capture devices makes possible a significant new paradigm for digital imaging because, unlike traditional digital cameras, cameraphones integrate: media capture; software programmable processing; wireless networking; rich user interaction modalities; and automatically gathered contextual metadata (spatial, temporal, social) in one mobile device.

We will discuss our Mobile Media Metadata (MMM) prototypes which leverage the spatio-temporal context and social community of media capture to infer the content and the sharing recipients of media captured on cameraphones. Over the past two years we have deployed and tested MMM1 (context-to-content inferencing on cameraphones to infer media content) and MMM2 (context-to-community inferencing on cameraphones to infer sharing recipients) with 60 users in the fall of 2003 and 2004 respectively. We will report on findings from our system development, user testing, ethnographic research, design research, and student generated product concepts for MMM-supported vertical applications. As a result of our approach to context-aware mobile media computing, we believe our MMM research will help solve a fundamental problem in personal media production and reuse: the need to have content-based access to the media consumers capture and share on mobile imaging devices.

Speaker's Bio

Marc Davis is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) at the University of California at Berkeley, where he directs Garage Cinema Research. Prof. Davis' work is focused on creating the technology and applications that will enable daily media consumers to become daily media producers. His research and teaching encompass the theory, design, and development of digital media systems for creating and using media metadata to automate media production, sharing, and reuse. Prof. Davis and his students in Garage Cinema Research are working on: Media Streams Metadata Exchange (an ontology and visual language for creating and using metadata throughout across the Web); Active Capture (automates direction and cinematography using real-time audio-video analysis in an interactive control loop to create reusable media assets at the point of capture); Adaptive Media (uses adaptive media templates and automatic editing functions to mass customize and personalize media); Mobile Media Metadata (leverages the spatio-temporal context and social community of media capture to automate metadata creation for mobile media capture, sharing, and reuse); and the Social Uses of Personal Media (analyzes the social uses of personal media to predict future uses and shape the design of next- generation personal media devices and applications). Working together, these research projects and their related technologies will radically simplify, decentralize, and personalize media production, sharing, and reuse, bringing about a "Garage Cinema" revolution in which people use computational media to communicate with each other every day.

Prof. Davis earned his BA in the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, his MA in literary theory and philosophy at the University of Konstanz in Germany, and his PhD in media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory. As part of his doctoral dissertation, he developed Media Streams, an iconic visual language for annotating, retrieving, and repurposing digital video. At the Media Lab, Davis co-founded the Narrative Intelligence Reading Group, which innovated interdisciplinary discourse at the intersection of literary and media theory, artificial intelligence, and media technology and design. From 1993 to 1998 at Interval Research Corporation, he led research and development teams in automatic media production technology for which a patent was awarded in 2001. From 1999 to 2002, Davis was chairman and chief technology officer of Amova, Inc., a developer of media automation and personalization technology. At UC Berkeley, Davis is a co-founder and executive committee member of the UC Berkeley’s new interdisciplinary Center for New Media (CNM). He is also an advisory board member of the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium (ATC) and an affiliated faculty member of the Berkeley Institute of Design (BiD).