1. A database for the Montreux Jazz Archive
STAR 2013 - 18.01.2013
Jean Rossier
2. The MJF archive
• Concert recordings (circa 5000 hours of
audio and video)
• BUT also: metadata
• set lists (songs)
• musicians on stage
• instruments played
• issues during a concert
• ...
• Photos
• Rights (legal)
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3. The richness of the archive
• Digitalizing the concerts is the first step,
but it is not sufficient
• Metadata is necessary to exploit the
richness of the archive
• Any active and deep exploration of the
archive relies on metadata
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4. The richness of the archive - schema
concert
source
musicians songs audio files video files
tapes
source digital
instruments rightholders digitalization LTO
quality quality
audio video
problems problems
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5. Multiple partners
• Multiple partners are involved in the
Montreux Jazz digital project
• Each partner provides some part of the
metadata
• At beginning of the project, information
was spread around
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6. Spread metadata
concert
Montreux Sounds EPFL
source
musicians songs audio files video files
tapes
source digital
instruments rightholders digitalization LTO
quality quality
MJF Vectracom
audio video
problems problems
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7. Single reference point
• We started to build a central database
that would be the single reference point
• This database is hosted in EPFL and
managed by the MMC team
• All existing information has been
imported and consolidated in the
central database
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8. The MJF archive as a model
recorded medias quality
musicians
concert
...
instruments songs audio files video files
... ...
rightholders usage rights quality control LTO
... ... ... ...
AV problems
...
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9. Multiple partners - single database
• Each partner of the project provides
some part of the metadata
• Partners insert metadata independently
• All metadata is aggregated in the
central database
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10. Interacting with the database
• Constraints:
• Partners access the database remotely
• Inserted data must be constrained (to
avoid meaningless data)
• Accesses must be monitored and
controlled
• We built a custom web application to
access the database
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11. Web application details
• Web application developed in Scala,
using the Lift web framework
• Scala is a language created at EPFL
• MySQL database
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12. Application layers
MJF
MJF
Research
other
MJF
Rights
DigitalizaJon portal apps
Scala
Web services MJF
DB
API
(REST)
MJF
Database MySQL
IT
infrastructure
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13. Partners interfaces
MJF
MJF
Research
other
MJF
Rights
DigitalizaJon portal apps
• Specific interfaces for each partner:
• Insertion
• Update
• Search
• Partners only have access to some
parts of the data
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17. Video previews
• Every digitalized video can be
previewed via the web application
• A low quality format of each video is
encoded
• The preview is played using Sublime
Video, an HTML5 video player
developed at EPFL
Demo: video preview
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18. Photos
• We are currently working on integrating
the photos into the database
• ~ 100’000 photos to archive
• As other data, the photos are linked to
existing items in the database (e.g.:
concerts, artists, rights)
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