Multimedia structuring using trees

George Tzanetakis & Luc Julia
Computer-Human Interaction Center (CHIC!)
SRI International
333 Ravenswood Avenue
Menlo Park, CA 94025
gtzan@cs.princeton.edu julia@speech.sri.com

Abstract
Traditionally work on multimedia structuring has been centered on the creation of indices and their use for
searching. Although searching is important there are many cases where the user just wants to browse through
the data to find something interesting without having any particular search goal. Multimedia data exhibits
hierarchical structure that can be exploited for more natural user interaction with the content.
In order to handle the large amounts of multimedia data more structure than what is currently available is
required. In this paper, we have focused on structuring multimedia data using trees to describe both temporal
and categorical relations. The pervasive use of trees to express hierarchies facilitates browsing, profiling, and
authoring. Our main target application is the implementation of a personalized TV-guide. The constraints
imposed by this application caused the development of a new simple compact graphical user interface for tree
browsing.

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