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Applications of Hypervideo

Hypervideo has recently started to be included into hypermedia systems. However there is already a great interest to accelerate its entrance in the hypermedia world. Once it was thought that video would enter very late into the Internet world due to its bandwidth requirements. But now that it has been proved the feasibility of using video in Internet, more and more persons are looking to make use of it forcing, as it was discussed in previous sections, changes in the rhetoric of the whole hypermedia system.

Hypervideo has a large area of applicability. Almost any application area that already uses video may benefit from hypervideo. Nevertheless some of the areas that use video, already implemented some of hypervideo functionality in one or another ways.

• Education. Academic professionals use video for documenting and studying teaching methods to inform the learning process or develop new educational programs. Comparison between different videos may require linking to specific time indexes in different videos. One example can be found in TIMSS 1998.

• Research and Development. Researchers and engineers often videotape experiments or collect observational data to accelerate and enhance their discoveries. For instance, usability testing requires to video persons using a system. The resulting video is then edited such that a coherent result analysis can be returned to the developers of the system. This editing and rearrangement of clips is a manual form of hypervideo. The development of hypervideo systems would greatly simplify the task of preparing usability reports.

• Computer-Based Training (CBT). Computer based training encompasses a very large community. Large enough to divide into specialized communities that held annual conferences, such as AICC (Aviation Industry CBT Committee). There are examples of video usage in all areas of CBT. Currently, CBT implements some of hypervideo functionality. For instance, a CBT system usually presents different video clips depending on the user performance and evaluation. This requires a concept of segments or nodes (clips) and links between clips. Better hypervideo systems would allow for more flexible presentations and would allow the system to adapt to the user. A hypervideo system may provide a user-driven CBT, instead of a more traditional system-driven CBT. For instance a CBT medical system may use dynamically segmented video clips in order to guide a persons through a medical procedure. Since a hypervideo system may be designed as a user-driven system, the system may synchronize dynamically the hypervideo to the user’s actions. Such a hypervideo system implies the possibility of using dynamic linking, segmenting and synchronization.

There are even more areas currently using video that would benefit from the availability of hypervideo systems. Some of those areas are discussed briefly in the following section.

• Entertainment. The entertainment industry can use hypervideo in order to develop different games or even different hypermovies. This could result on a new kind of entertainment where the persons can participate in the movie. There are great expectations for such an entertainment media.

• Marketing. Advertising executives and market researchers videotape focus groups to solicit feedback and devise effective marketing strategies. Also, in the present society, there is a great interest for Internet-based marketing, namely the use of homepages for marketing purposes. based on the number

• Law. Attorneys routinely tape legal depositions and then later use the video and transcripts to argue a case or impeach a witness. Annotations and linking to videos is required in order to facilitate this process. Hypervideo systems would facilitate finding the appropriate parts of video and would also facilitate the process creating hypervideo presentations.

Next section: Future Research

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