Rapid Prototyping of Multimedia Analysis Systems: A Networked Hardware/Software Solution

This paper describes a hardware/software framework and approach for fast integration and testing of complex real-time multimedia analysis algorithms. It enables the rapid assessment of combinations of multimedia analysis algorithms, in order to determine their usefulness in future consumer storage products. The framework described here consists of a set of networked personal computers, running a variety of multimedia analysis algorithms and a multi-media database. The database stores both multimedia content and metadata – as generated by multimedia content analysis algorithms – and maintains links between the two. The full hardware/software solution functions as a test-bed for new, advanced content analysis algorithms; new algorithms are easily plugged-in into any of the networked PCs, while outdated algorithms are simply removed. Once a selected consumer system configuration has passed important user-tests, a more dedicated embedded consumer product implementation is derived in a straightforward way from the framework..