Audiovisual Hypermedia in the Semantic Web

Introduction

The rapid evolution of digital technology, among others, has revolutionized multimodal content production and distribution processes, propelling novel mediated communication services. Interactive media authoring and sharing technologies are currently being launched, bringing forward new ways of audiovisual (AV) content exchange. Web documentaries (web-docs) and hypermedia have appeared as a natural extension of filmed documentaries and digital TV, inheriting also some of their advantages. Narrative documentaries adopt AV mediated communication mechanisms that humans have been accustomed to be informed and communicate with each other, so that they are more informative and vivid compared to other documents (books, web-pages, multimedia, etc.). Thus, AV-documentaries and especially web-docs can be more easily distributed and attended from most ages and social groups (Dimoulas, Kalliris, Chatzara, Tsipas, & Papanikolaou, 2014a; Kotsakis, Kalliris & Dimoulas, 2012; Veglis, Dimoulas & Kalliris, 2014). Moreover, the continuous evolution of the computing power and the digital storage media, favor digital video production and distribution. This is also fuelled by the increased network speed, the efficiency of the contemporary compression algorithms and the continuous decrease of the corresponding costs (Kotsakis et al., 2012; Dimoulas, Kalliris & Veglis, 2014). High quality AV capturing equipment is currently available at low cost and size as part of smart phones and other mobile computing terminals with inherent networking capabilities, allowing easy AV-content production, contribution and sharing (Atzori, Delgado & Giusto, 2012; Dimoulas et al., 2014a; 2014b; Veglis et al. 2014). In this context, more and more users are involved in the AV production and consumption chain, so that creative experience and AV media culture are cultivated. Nevertheless, AV media related achievements are still far from the progress that has been made in textual information management during the outspread of social media and Web 2.0 services.

Interactive services have also been introduced into the AV production industry, aiming at augmenting human-machine interaction (HMI). AV content is enhanced in functional and informative level, further stimulating users to actively participate in arousing interactive scenarios. While the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is ongoing, intelligent AV-content processing and management services are pursued, facilitating users’ participation on semantically enhanced hypermedia authoring and collaborative multichannel media publishing. Although hypermedia technologies are rapidly evolving, there are still open challenges regarding upcoming semantic web services (De Bra, Freyne, & Berkovsky, 2013; Dimoulas et al., 2014a; 2014b; Kanellopoulos, 2012; Monaghan, Handschuh, & O'Sullivan, 2011; Veglis et al. 2014). The current article examines current trends and future perspectives of AV hypermedia (AVH), considering all the forms of non-linear storytelling (web-docs, multichannel media publishing, etc.) and the associated hypermedia authoring counterparts. Background is presented providing basic definitions, involved technology, achieved progress and limitations. Recommendations and future research direction are then stated, aiming at serving a two-folded target. Firstly, to present new, user-friendly forms of collaborative creativity, hypermedia authoring and storytelling that current technology allows to be successfully deployed. Secondly, to suggest innovative adaptation mechanisms that can be utilized in both the AVH production and consumption ends, allowing for intelligent media management and augmented semantic interaction services to be launched. In this context, the importance of AVH toward the transition to the Web 3.0 era is revealed.