This year the Research and Technological Innovation Center presented 4 items at the Conference held in Amsterdam at IBC 2015, the leading international convention along with NAB Show in Las Vegas on broadcasting technologies and new media. The CRIT contributions covered a wide range of projects and technologies, with impact on the whole chain of production and distribution of digital content: the automatic analysis of RAI News Active, the personalization of the linear radio channels with the Hybrid Content radio, standardization of recommendation systems with MPEG-UD and the European project BRIDGET.

Thursday, September 10 Sabino Metta started with the presentation of MPEG-21 User Description (UD) [1], an emerging standard of the MPEG family thought to integrate recommendation engines horizontally. A recommendation engine is a software service will offer multimedia content using the analysis of the user profile and the context in which the user is located. MPEG-21 UD, the development of which CRIT has contributed in a decisive manner, defines a standard data structures (descriptors) that enables full interoperability scenarios between recommendation services, allowing one hand the users to enjoy a richer experience and adhering to their own needs and content and service providers to increase the visibility of their assets and create new business synergies.

Sunday, September 13 Maurizio Montagnuolo illustrated RAI Active News [2], a suite of technologies developed to assist the production of news content through an approach based on automatic content and their association in thematic dossiers. Active News, developed entirely at CRIT systems using a multi-functional dashboard to monitor TV and online news flows, news agencies, international circuits and to keep you constantly updated on the developments of the topics of interest. The dashboard presents useful statistics in terms of places, persons and organizations that play a role in the news, allowing an agile and efficient process of collecting and organizing for producing news information.

Always Sunday Alberto Messina presented BRIDGET [3] [5], a project co-financed by the European Commission which aims to create advanced technologies for the efficient production of second screen applications and integrate these technologies into a tool for professional authoring and ergonomic. Thanks to the results of BRIDGET in perspective you will experience advanced multi-screen experience on a continuous basis, by taking advantage of new communication channels with your favorite program, with new content and more interactivity. Some key technologies in BRIDGET are visual search, the automatic analysis of the media and the reconstruction of 3D models content. The project has also demonstrated its technology in the Future Zone IBC, getting a general consensus on the objectives and implementation methods.

Monday, 14 Paolo Casagranda finally described the Hybrid Content Radio [4], a new framework for customization of the linear radio through the audio content-replacement. Hybrid Content Radio allows you to replace parts of the linear programming radio (programs, songs, or fragments) with more related audio content to the listener, thanks to recommendations based on context. The proposed solution allows to center on the listener the radio service, to efficiency while taking advantage of the diffusion channel. The framework is based on standard protocols, such as Service and Information Programme of Hybrid Digital Radio and Cross-Platform Authentication. The work is the result of the common vision of a group of European broadcasters, engaged in research on radio services [6].

NOTES:
* The article “A Context-Based Hybrid Context Radio” has been judged one of the most relevant IBC and selected to be published in the journal IET “The Best of EIT and IBC 2015” (http://www.theiet.org/ communities / multimedia / ibc / best-of-2015.cfm)

BRIDGET ** The project was awarded at IBC 2015 with the license plate “What Caught My Eye – Blue-Sky Thinking” as part of the European cluster of second screen.

[1] S. Metta, A. Messina, M. Montagnuolo, “MPEG-21 UD: a solution for horizontal integration of media recommendation systems”, IBC Conference 2015, Amsterdam, September 2015.
[2] M. Montagnuolo, A. Messina, “RAI Active News: integrating knowledge in newsrooms” , IBC Conference 2015, Amsterdam, September 2015.
[3] M. Bober, I. Feldmann, S. Garcia Lobo, A. Messina, S. Paschalakis, G. Perrone, V. Scurtu, G. Vavalà, “BRIDGET: an approach at sustainable and efficient production of second screen media applications”, IBC Conference 2015, Amsterdam, September 2015**.
[4] P. Casagranda, A. Erk, S. O’Halpin, D. Born, W. Huijten,”A Context-Based Hybrid Context Radio”, IBC Conference 2015, Amsterdam, September 2015*.
[5] BRIDGET, http://ict-bridget.eu
[6] EBU SP/DRP, https://tech.ebu.ch/groups/drp