Clipper: Enhancing Time Based Media for Research

A collaboration between The City of Glasgow College, The Open University and Reachwill Ltd., Funded by Jisc

#clippertube

Workshop Invitation

Toolkit Description

Workshop Content and Formats

Further Information

Apologies for Cross Posting 

Dear Colleagues 

Invitation

We are developing a free and open source software toolkit to support researchers in all disciplines who work with digital audio-visual media and would like to invite you to attend our upcoming community consultation workshops in September / October 2015, engage in comment, feedback and discussion about our online prototypes and arrange discussion meetings (for further information – please see below and via the web links). The workshops are:

National Library of Scotland, Monday 28th Sept

Manchester School of Art, Wednesday 14th October

British Library, London, Monday 26th October

We are in the second phase of our development cycle having already produced an online ‘proof of concept’ in phase 1 and received positive and useful feedback from the research community. In the present stage of our work we are creating a working online prototype that researchers will be able to experiment with.

We will be releasing our first online prototype by the 28^th September and then modifying it in the light of feedback as we conduct our workshops and engage with the research community in workshops, online and via smaller meetings. By the end of November, through this process of co-design, we aim to have a working prototype that demonstrates the toolkit working with separate audio-visual collections. Our aims for phase 3 in 2016 are to produce a working version of the toolkit installed in an institutional setting and a trial demonstrator site for a possible national service.

Toolkit Description

Here is a brief overview of the toolkit functionality taken from our brochure: 

“Clipper is a free open-source web application enabling researchers to create and share virtual-clips without altering the original media files. Clipper enables you to mark the start and end of interesting events while playing audio or video data files through a standard web browser. You can add rich text annotations to each clip, and combine clips into playlists (cliplists).”

To help conceptualise using the Clipper toolkit – here is a summary: 

•       Control the play back of online audio / video

•       Specify the start and end points of custom clips within the media

•       Add notes to the clips 

•       Combine clips together into cliplists

•       Share clips and cliplists

This 'user generated data' is stored as metadata in HTML documents, which points to the source audio / video files and is viewable in any modern web browser. The end-user will only be able to play the original audio / video files if they have the rights to access them, vital for complying with copyright and data protection issues. Thus, although the clipper documents are owned by the user, the original media stays where it is. Because the native file format of Clipper is HTML, Clipper documents are very portable, social media friendly and easy to integrate into existing systems.

We believe there are many potential opportunities and benefits connected with Clipper, both in the open design of the toolkit and the choice of HTML as the native file format for storing and presenting data. The feedback we have received so far has confirmed the wide range of imaginative and creative applications that Clipper might be put to. Here are a few examples:

Analysing and marking up ethnographical recordings ‘in the field’ offline (as local media) prior to upload to a server for sharing and collaboration

Identifying key incidents in time lapse recordings from scientific microscopes

Exporting Clipper data as CSV files to allow analysis and visualisation of the data

Crowdsourcing metadata creation for audio-visual collections

Facilitating ‘deep-access’ to digital archives to facilitate citizen research

Providing story-telling and narratives tools to incorporate digital archive content

Makes it easy to cite, quote and comment audio-visual media and data in digital academic communications – putting it on an equal footing with text.

We are keen to further explore and identify opportunities and benefits for researchers, data managers, archivists, librarians, educators and general users - to include them in the design and development process.

Workshop Content and Formats

Morning session - general. Afternoon session - more technical.

10:00 Arrival, registration and tea / coffee

10:30 Introductions, project overview and aims

10:45 Demonstration of prototype system, initial feedback & discussion

11:15 Hands-on session, feedback (please bring laptop - use Chrome browser)

12:00 Implications for data management, service development and policy - discussion

12:30 - 1:30 lunch, discussions and networking

13:30 Hands-on session (please bring laptop - use Chrome browser) code inspection and walkthrough, ideas and requirements for institutional deployment / national service.

15:00 Close

Workshop direct web links:

Edinburgh: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clipper-project-workshop-edinburgh-tickets-18586167728

Manchester: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clipper-project-workshop-manchester-tickets-18586702327

London: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clipper-project-british-library-labs-workshop-tickets-18586738435

 

Further Information about the Clipper Project and links to the online demos and prototypes

Clipper Brochure: http://blog.clippertube.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/clipper-brochure-a4.pdf  

About the Clipper project: http://blog.clippertube.com  

The Jisc funding programme: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/get-involved/research-data-spring

Research data management: For those colleagues who are particularly concerned with the management of research data we would like to draw their attention to this blog post:

http://blog.clippertube.com/index.php/2015/05/10/clipper-the-benefits-for-the-research-data-lifecycle/

New Online working prototype release set for 28^th September via the project blog http://blog.clippertube.com