- VESTA is a video annotation platform developed by CRIM to help researchers study the impacts of technologies on learning by allowing them to analyze and annotate audio and video recordings. - It offers integrated computer tools for annotating multimedia content on a timeline in a shared environment. This allows researchers to accelerate and automate analysis while improving consistency. - The modular platform provides services like speech recognition, face detection and can be used independently or through its interface. CRIM is looking for users and collaborators to apply this technology to research.

1. W W W. C R I M . C A
Principal partenaire financier
The VESTA Platform:
Video Evaluation System
for Task Analysis
TEKK TOUR DIGITAL WALLONIA 2017
PRESENTED BY FRANÇOYS LABONTÉ, GENERAL MANAGER
NOVEMBER 6TH, 2017

2. 2
CONTEXT
• About CRIM (Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal)
– Not-for profit applied research center in IT, bridging the academic and the industrial worlds
– Specialized in advanced data analytics: speech recognition, computer vision, image and video
analysis, semantics and natural language processing, data science, Big Data, AI
• About VESTA
– Video Evaluation System for Task Analysis: a timeline based annotation platform of multimedia
content
– Designed to meet the needs of researchers in Education, studying the impacts of technologies on
the learning process (LEADS: Learning Environment Across Disciplines research network)
– Offers an integrated set of innovative computer tools for analyzing and annotating audio and video
recordings
– Fully operational platform that can easily be used by non-IT specialist
– Analysis and annotations can be shared among other researchers, thus increasing cooperation and
opening the door to larger-scale multi-partner studies
– Allows to significantly accelerate, and in some cases, automate the analysis and annotation of
recordings, while at the same time improves consistency of the results
– Software architecture takes into account modularity and reusability principles

3. 3
VESTA
• 5 Web services that can be used through the platform, or independently by calling
directly their API
– Speaker segmentation
– Speech-to-text
– Text-audio matching
– Video shot transition detection
– Face pose analysis
• 4 Data Management components
– Annotation storage
– Load balancing
– Multimedia file storage
– Access rights management
• Free access for public researcher projects
• Trial version deployed on a “commercial” cloud infrastructure

4. 4
USING VESTA

5. 5
VESTA: AT THE HEART OF A MUCH LARGER ANNOTATION PLATFORM
Adnotare =
PACTE: Collaborative Electronic Text Annotation Platform
+ VESTA: Timeline based annotation platform for video and audio

6. 6
CONCLUSION
• Another platform also under development for climate change data analysis and
visualisation:
– PAVICS: PÔLE D’ANALYSE ET DE VISUALISATION DE L’INFORMATION CLIMATIQUE ET
SCIENTIFIQUE (PAVICS)
• Looking for users and collaborators
• Win-win model: leading edge expertise in IT to the service of research
communities
• Significant productivity gains
• These platforms can be seen as efficient technology transfer vehicle