Annotations for streaming video on the Web: system design and usage studies

Streaming video on the World Wide Web is being widely deployed, and workplace training and distance education are key applications. The ability to annotate video on the Web can provide significant added value in these and other areas. Written and spoken annotations can provide `in context' personal notes and can enable asynchronous collaboration among groups of users. With annotations, users are no longer limited to viewing content passively on the Web, but are free to add and share commentary and links, thus transforming the Web into an interactive medium. We discuss design considerations in constructing a collaborative video annotation system, and we introduce our prototype, called MRAS. We present preliminary data on the use of Web-based annotations for personal note-taking and for sharing notes in a distance education scenario. Users showed a strong preference for MRAS over pen-and-paper for taking notes, despite taking longer to do so. They also indicated that they would make more comments and questions with MRAS than in a `live' situation, and that sharing added substantial value.