MDID.ORG

1. MDID Users Group
VRA Conference 2010
Atlanta, GA

2. Vision and Guiding Principles
• Allow students and faculty to manage,
discover, and aggregate digital media for
intuitive and flexible delivery and presentation
• Embrace Web 2.0 and open access

3. Content Discovery
• Starts on front page
• Displays selection of images accessible to user

4. Explore Interface
• Keyword and facet driven
• Facets are based on Dublin Core
• Shows all records accessible to user
– Unauthenticated (anonymous) users see publicly
accessible content

5. Sidebar: Role of Dublin Core
• MDID “knows” meaning of some Dublin Core
fields
– Title
– Identifier
– Relations
• As many fields as possible should be mapped
(directly or indirectly) to a Dublin Core field

6. Facets
• By default facets are broken up by words
• Phrases are possible
– Controlled vocabulary fields
– Examples: Creator, Period

7. Sidebar: Search Engine
• MDID uses Solr for all searching and facet
creation
• Solr is an Open Source tool built on Lucene,
which MDID2 uses
• Search behavior can be customized directly in
Solr

8. External Content
• All searches also run against external sources
– MDID shared collections
– Flickr
– ARTstor

9. Multimedia Support
• Thumbnails are automatically generated
– Images
– Videos (still frame five seconds in)
– Audio (30 second waveform sample)

10. Sidebar: Supported Multimedia Formats
• MDID backend supports FFmpeg compatible
formats; commonly available client side
delivery tools may only support a subset
• MDID uses FFmpeg to identify files and to
extract information
– Determine bandwidth and pixel dimensions
– Extract video frames
– Extract audio samples to create waveform

11. MediaViewer
• Replaces MDID2’s ImageViewer
• Complete rewrite with modern technologies
• Three modes:
– MediaViewer: Web (development complete)
– MediaViewer: Desktop (almost complete)
– MediaViewer: Package (under way)
• Compatible with both MDID2 and MDID3

12. MediaViewer: Web
• Runs in any modern browser on both Windows
and Mac OS
• Requires Flash player version 10.0 or higher
• Runs in full screen mode with limited keyboard
interaction
• Currently integrated with MDID2 demo site
http://mdid.org/demo/

15. MediaViewer: Web
• The MediaViewer along with installation
instructions will be published on new support
site
• A short video tutorial and PDF documentation
are also available on the MDID support site
• MDID3 will feature the new MediaViewer out
of the box

16. MediaViewer: Desktop
• Built on Adobe AIR technology using same
code as web version
• Requires a live Internet connection
• Easy web-based installation
• Will be released with MDID3
• Will be backward compatible with MDID2

21. Accessibility
• Content discovery and management is
possible without
– a mouse
– JavaScript
– Flash
• Certain viewers depend on JavaScript or Flash,
e.g. MediaViewer

22. Vision and Guiding Principles
• Embrace Web 2.0 and open access
• Encourage content sharing between
individuals, institutions, and the public
• Leverage collective intelligence through
comments, ratings and tagging
• Engage students by allowing them to add,
create, share, and manage content

23. Social Networking Features
• Stable URLs (permalinks) to all pages
• Tagging for records and presentations
• Comments

24. User Involvement
• Optionally all authenticated users can use
MDID to manage their content
– Upload metadata and files
– Customize metadata on all records
– Create presentations
• By default these actions are invisible to all
other users
• File uploads are optionally limited by quotas

25. Management Tools
• Built into web application
• Metadata import
– CSV
– VRA Core 4
• Job management
– Long running tasks are executed asynchronously
– Job status is displayed in browser
– Administrators can monitor and control all jobs

26. Content Organization
• Metadata records and media files are
organized separately
• Records are stored in Collections
• Media files are stored in Storage Areas

27. Collections can contain other collections
Photography
Landscapes
JMU Photographs

28. The same collection can belong to multiple
collections
Photography JMU Artifacts
Landscapes Founding
Documents
JMU Photographs JMU Photographs

29. Records and associated media
• Multiple files of different types can be
associated with a single record
Media
File: john-doe.mp3
Record Type: audio/mpeg
Title: Interview with John Doe
Date: May 5, 2004
Media
File: john-doe.pdf
Type: application/pdf

30. Hierarchical Records
• If multiple files of the
same type exist, each
should have its own Wilson Hall
record
• Records can belong to at
most one parent record
and have no, one, or Front view Detail view
multiple child records

31. Viewers
• Viewers are tools that display a single record or
a whole presentation on the web
• Viewers support a variety of presentation
types:
– MediaViewer for slideshows
– Player for video or audio playlists
– Flash card generator
– Slideshow handout generator
• More viewers will be added to MDID over time

32. Viewers
• MDID determines which viewers fully or
partially support an object or a presentation
• Mixing media types in a presentation is
possible but may limit the number of viewers
that are available
• When multiple files are associated with a
single record in a presentation, viewers
intelligently choose the appropriate file where
possible

33. Records can belong to multiple collections
JMU Photographs Architecture
Wilson Hall Wilson Hall

34. Storage Areas
• Each Storage Area in MDID defines a physical
storage area to hold media files
• Collection files can be spread across multiple
storage areas rather than restricted to one
physical directory
• Storage areas can hold files that belong to
different collections

35. Storage Areas
• Storage areas can add functionality
– Automatically manage ZIP archives
– Produce streaming media links
– Physically organize files in subdirectories

36. Permissions
• Only three permissions
– Read
– Write
– Manage
• Can be set for users or user groups on
– Collections
– Storage Areas
– Presentations

37. Organizing collections to control access
• Goal: some records in a Photographs
collection are available
to the public, while
Public
others are not
• Solution 1: Create two
collections and add
them to a parent
Private
collection

38. Organizing collections to control access
• Goal: some records in a Photographs
collection are available
to the public, while
others are not
• Solution 2: Create one
private collections and
add it to a public parent
Private
collection

39. Organizing Storage Areas to control access
• Goal: Only low quality video should be publicly
available
• Solution: Store videos in different storage
areas
Low quality video storage
Record
High quality video storage

40. Customization
• Interface template is completely CSS based
• All colors are configured in one area
• Two master colors define basic color scheme
• Logos can be switched out
• HTML can be modified easily

41. PowerPoint
• Export MDID presentations as PPTX files
– Users choose from different themes
– Additional themes can easily be added
• Import PPT and PPTX files into MDID
– Converts all slides to images
– Slide quality not as good as an image export
directly from PowerPoint
– Requires OpenOffice on server

42. Vision and Guiding Principles
• Continue to promote adoption of MDID
beyond JMU
• Build MDID 3 using Open Source software
• Share MDID 3 through an Open Source license

43. Server Architecture
• MDID can be installed on any major operating
system
– Windows
– Linux
– MacOS

44. Apache using
mod_python
Django
Microsoft IIS
using Python
using
Application
PyISAPIe
Solr
Java
other
server
Jetty or
Search
PostgreSQL
MySQL
Microsoft SQL
Server Component Overview
Database
Server
Caching
Memcached
(optional)
Job Engine
Gearman
(optional)
File Conversion
OpenOffice
(optional)

45. Server Architecture
• Components can reside on one or multiple
servers running any major operating system
• Components can be duplicated on multiple
servers for redundancy or to support more
load

46. Migrating from MDID2
• Document any customizations
– Custom user authentication
• Clean up collection fields
– Map as many fields to Dublin Core as possible
• Migration tool will copy users, groups,
collections, records, etc.
– Due to differences in data structures, migration
results need to be reviewed before going live

47. MDID as a platform for building multimedia apps
• Developers can build custom multimedia
applications on top of MDID
– Showcases for special collections
– Specialized interfaces for compound multimedia
objects
– Simplified interfaces with unneeded functionality
removed

48. JMUtube
• Allows faculty to
manage and deliver
video, audio and Adobe
Presenter files
• Simple drag-and-drop
playlist builder
• Integrated with JMU’s
classroom recording
system and Camtasia
Relay

49. Shenandoah Valley Oral History Project
• Records have audio and text transcripts
attached
• Custom interface presents scrolling text
synchronized to playing audio

50. New MDID help site
• Centralized documentation for all MDID
installations
• Context sensitive links embedded in MDID
• Supports social networking features
– Comments and tagging
– Request an account and contribute documentation
– Integrated FAQ where questions are asked and
answered
• Community-oriented: Success will depend on
community participation

54. Q&A

55. Project Team
• Andreas Knab Lead Software Developer, CIT
• Kevin Hegg Assistant Director, CIT
• Grover Saunders Web Media Developer, CIT
• Tina Updike Visual Resources Specialist, SAAH
• Sarah Cheverton Director, CIT

56. Support
• MDID blog and wiki at http://mdid.org/
• MDID users list at
http://listserv.jmu.edu/archives/mdidusers-l.html
• MDID2 project on SourceForge at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mdid
• MDID3 project on Google Code at
http://code.google.com/p/rooibos
• Email: mdid@jmu.edu

57. Information
• Authors:
– Kevin Hegg (heggkj@jmu.edu)
– Andreas Knab (knab2ar@jmu.edu)
– Christina Updike Visual Resources Specialist
(updikecb@jmu.edu)
• Further Information:
– Visit http://mdid.org/
– Email mdid@jmu.edu
o Product and company names mentioned in this presentation may be the trademarks of their
respective owners.

58. Additional MDID Events at VRA
• Tomorrow, Friday, March 19
Ask the Experts Forum – Atlanta H
3:30 pm
VRA Digital Matchmaking Group – Atlanta EFG
5:00 pm