DEMO 99 Conference Industry's first real time audio cataloger makes video searchable by spoken words, speaker names and audio types INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—February 8, 1999—Virage, Inc. today debuted and announced the immediate availability of the 1.0 version of its AudioLogger™ software, the first application that automatically transforms the audio content of video into searchable text in real time. By intelligently “listening” to the audio track of a video, the AudioLogger identifies spoken words, speaker names and audio types, generating a powerful index that allows users to search for and find specific segments of video. The announcement was made at the DEMO 99 Conference, the industry’s premiere showcase of leading edge products and technologies. “At CNN, the vast majority of video that we deal with is raw footage that contains no embedded textual material, such as closed captioning, from which to construct an index of the content,” said Kevin Ivey , Vice President of Research & Development at Cable News Network, Inc. “We are very excited ab out the introduction of the Audio Logger because of its potential to allow broadcasters to extract and index , in real time, the wealth of information contained in the audio tracks of video . The ability to search incoming news feeds by speaker or by spoken content would enable us to accelerate the rate at which we bring stories to air, one of CNN’s major objectives. We see this as an important developing component to our on going content management efforts.” “Making video search able is the perfect application for today ’s audio and speech technologies,” said Paul Lego, chief executive officer of Virage. “Virage extends the benefits of search able video beyond the broadcast market by automatically turning the audio portion of any video into search able text. The combination of the Audio Logger and Video Logger™ create a unique solution that transforms video into a powerful decision support and communication tool for the corporate and Internet markets. Developed around a powerful and extensible framework, AudioLogger is a PC-based application that combines three unique audio processing engines to automatically generate keyword, speaker identification and audio classification indices from a raw audio signal. Whether the signal originates from a satellite, a VTR, a live feed or directly from a microphone, AudioLogger transforms the audio portion into a rich index of textual content in real time, thereby eliminating the dependency on tedious manual annotation or costly closed captioning. Speech Keyword Engine Audio Logger generates a key word index for any speech sample using IBM’s ViaVoice™ technology for Broad cast Speech Transcription. This speech recognition engine handles continuous speech in real time and is speaker independent, eliminating the need for it to be pre-trained for individual speakers. The engine also incorporates special filtering to eliminate background noise and other signal contamination. Speaker Identification Engine The AudioLogger is the first commercial product to incorporate IBM’s real time ViaVoice technology for Broadcast Speaker Identification . Audio Logger identifies voices from a user- defined library of up to 300 speakers per session, regardless of the words or even the language spoken . By simply providing a short speech sample, users can easily add new speakers to the library. Multiple libraries can be created to support different content types and sources. Audio Classification Engine AudioLogger also generates an audio classification index that allows users to locate specific audio cues. For example, a segment might be classified as speech , music, ambient noise or silence. AudioLogger combines these various audio indices with the video indices created by Virag e’s V ideoLogger. The resu lt is an ex trem ely accu rate in dex of th e v ideo that can be exported to a variety of data stores, such as Web servers, database management systems or media asset management systems, allowing search able video to be incorporated in to abroad range of applications used throughout the enterprise. With the Virage VideoLogger and Audio Logger applications users no longer have to spend hours creating transcripts or adding annotations manually to make video search able—it all happens automatically , effortlessly and in realtime. The Virage AudioLogger 1.0 is currently shipping with a unit price of $15,000 (U.S.). For additional product or purchase information , con tact Virage Sales at (650) 573-3236 or info@virage.com About Virage, Inc. Virage is the pioneer and recognized market leader in video and image search products. The Virage VideoLogger and AudioLogger software set the standard for real-time indexing and distribution of video across the Internet or corporate intranets and Virage has been named the market winner by industry analyst group Frost & Sullivan. Virage customers include ABC News, AltaVista, BBC, CBS News, CNN, CNN Interactive, Compaq, Federal Bureau of Investigations, General Motors, Harvard Business School, Lockheed Martin, Lucent Technologies, NASA, NBC News, Reuters and several classified U.S. government agencies. These companies rely on the Virage VideoLogger as the critical foundation technology for effectively deploying video within their operations. Head quartered in San Mateo, California, Virage was incorporated in 1994 to provide organizations with advanced methods for accessing and leveraging media assets. For more information , see the Virage Website at http://www.virage.com or call (650) 573-3210.
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