Content-based Retrieval of Flash TM Movies : Research Issues , Generic Framework , and Future Directions *

As a prevailing web media format, nowadays FlashTM movies are created, delivered, and viewed by over millions of users in their daily experiences with the Internet. However, issues regarding the indexing and retrieval of Flash movies are unfortunately overlooked by the research community, which severely restrict the utilization of the extremely valuable Flash resource. A close examination reveals that the intrinsic complexity of a Flash movie, including its heterogeneous media components, its dynamic nature, and user interactivity, makes content-based Flash retrieval a host of research issues not thoroughly addressed by the existing techniques. As the first endeavor in this area, we propose a generic framework termed as FLAME (FLash Access and Management Environment) embodying a 3-layer structure that addresses the representation, indexing, and retrieval of Flash movies by mining and understanding of the movie content. An experimental prototype for Flash retrieval is implemented to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of FLAME, and future research directions on Flash management and retrieval are discussed in details.