Collaborating with International Faculty to Develop Video Resources: The MllerKluge Dialogues

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Collaborating with International Faculty to
Develop Video ResourcesThe Müller/Kluge
Dialogues

• Danielle Mericle Melissa Kuo
• Digital Media Group, Digital Consulting
  Production Services

Digital Library Federation Fall Forum
2006 Boston, MA
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Project Overview

• Twenty-two interviews between Heiner Müller
  Alexander Kluge, filmed between 1988 and 1995
  (pivotal historical period)
• Heiner Müller East German writer, arguably most
  important European dramatist in 20th century
• Alexander Kluge leading writer, film maker,
  cultural theoretician, and public intellectual in
  Germany
• Material to be transcribed, translated,
  captioned, annotated, segmented, described, and
  made freely available via internet
• Online portal created as part of CULs Faculty
  Grants InitiativeAdvancing e-Scholarship

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Project Participants

• Rainer Stollman, leading scholar on Alexander
  Kluge, University of Bremen (Kluge personally
  donated films to Professor Stollman for project)
• David Bathrick, leading scholar on Heiner Müller,
  Cornell University
• Graduate students from both institutions
• Digital Media Group, Cornell University Library
  (3 staff members working approximately 15 of
  time on project)

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Logistical Challenges

• Coordinating an international, academic group
• Staying in budget (cost recovery model)
• Small development team
• Lots of R D

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Budget Strategies

• Leverage Resources Convinced CUL to purchase
  Flash server (outside of project budget) to
  support ongoing A/V digitization efforts
• Conduct R D as part of multiple projects
  share development costs
• Partnering Institutions Support
• Cornell German Department funded
  translation/transcription and captioning of
  material
• University of Bremen migrated Digital Beta SP
  media at cost

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Workflow Strategies

• Careful coordination
• International group required elaborate workflow-
  employed Confluence Wiki to track
  progresshttp//wiki.library.cornell.edu/wiki/logi
  n.action
• Monthly group meetings
• Utilized Go To Meeting software, a web
  application which enables screen sharing and
  conference calling
• Patience
• Faculty members have multiple prioritiesaccept
  that things are going to take longer to finish
  than planned

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Scholarship

• Professors Stollman Bathrick leading experts in
  their fields research done to create annotations
  and translations contribute significantly to
  pedagogical value of site
• Transcriptions and translations are now the
  authoritative versions many never before
  translated to English
• Upcoming conference Fall 07 on Literature
  Media to be hosted at Cornell site will be
  centerpiece of dialogue

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Technology

• What we started with
• Videos in DigiBeta Pal (European broadcast
  format)
• What we wanted to end up with
• Web site
• Streaming video
• English/German site
• English and German captions and transcripts
• Database
• Google searchable
• Annotations (add-on)

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Challenges

• How do we convert and deliver video on the web?
• How will we convert transcriptions and
  translations into sub-titles?
• What metadata do we want and who will create it?
• How do we organize the video content and push it
  to users? (Segments, themes, search, etc.)

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Options and more options

• Video - Quicktime, Real Player, Flash, streaming
  technologies
• Captioning software - HiCaption, Magpie, custom
  application
• Database - MySQL, Filemaker
• Metadata Basic Dublin Core with additional
  fields for chapter segments, themes
• Google Search tool

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Basic Workflow

• Programming Web Development
• Design web interface
• Create template system for web pages
  (Smarty/PHP)
• Set up database for metadata
• Create SMIL files for Flash code
• Deliver HTML transcripts from caption XML with
  XSLT
• Develop system for annotations
• Load all content into database
• Make it work!

• Digitization
• Convert material- Pal to NTSC MPEG2 (archival
  format)
• Create derivatives (Final Cut Pro)
• Flash movies- three versions for varying
  bandwidth
• AVI MP3 files for captioning
• Stills for website
• Load Flash Files

• Captioning
• Transcribe films (using "Express Scribe"
  software)
• Translate transcriptions- German to English
• Using Hi-Software, add captions to films (German
  English)
• Save captions (with time-code) as XML
• Upload XML into database

• Metadata
• Determine schema for video/chapters
• Develop Filemaker database for web access
• Work with faculty to develop controlled
  vocabulary

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The site (in development)

• http//muller-kluge.library.cornell.edu/

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Whats next?

• Ongoing maintenance of site
• Moving from project to programinvestigating
  A/V repository model
• Working with facultyconcluding thoughts

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• Danielle Mericle dkm26_at_cornell.edu
• Melissa Kuo mhk33_at_cornell.edu
• http//muller-kluge.library.cornell.edu/