Subject: Video Mosaic source and binary release

From: [email-masked] (See-Mong Tan)
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 18:22:07 -0600

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Feb 9, 1996, Software Research Group, CS Dept., University of Illinois 

Vosaic integrates the organization, retrieval and navigation of 
continuous media into the World Wide Web.  The Vosaic system includes a 
Web browser, server, and Video Datagram Protocol (VDP) that adapt to network 
load and client CPU conditions.  Html extensions embed continuous or stored 
real-time video and audio in Web documents.  The extensions may specify the 
starting and finishing frame of any clip of stored audio or video.
Frame-based video annotations embed dynamic hyperlinks displayed as visible 
areas within the video data stream.  Meta-information provides search 
capabilities for video databases. 

The newest B2.96 Release supports SGI and Sun (Solaris) browsers
and SGI, Sun and HP servers.  Users may create hypervideo documents using 
hyperlink editors and parse file generators included with the release.
Although a variety of compression algorithms work with Vosaic, the current
release supports MPEG-1 video and MPEG layer I or II sound.  Software to create 
appropriate MPEG sources are available though links on the Vosaic Web site.
Free binaries for Vosaic are available. Source is available at no charge to 
researchers and developers who agree to the terms of the Vosaic developer's 
licence.

The Vosaic documentation and software is available from the Web site

                   http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/vosaic.

Two papers, one old and one new, describe the architecture. Browsers may view
National Park and India footage as well as other demos at our site.  Example 
Web course materials with embedded video being developed for a Multimedia and 
Operating System classes will also be available from time to time.

Vosaic was developed by the Systems Research Group of the Department of
Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The Vosaic
team includes Professor Roy Campbell, Zhigang Chen and See-Mong Tan of
the University of Illinois, and Dong Xie of the University of Oslo, Norway.
We welcome comments and feedback.  E-mail may be addressed to [email-masked].

We hope you enjoy Vosaic.  If you set up a video server, please let us
know.