CSIRO’s Aida mobile browser technology means that high quality video can be delivered to 3G mobile phones from internet web servers in a continuous stream, minimising waiting time. In addition, CSIRO is using a special format for this delivery, which attaches metadata to the video clips, so they can be surfed and searched. Now video is as interactive as the rest of the web and as portable as a mobile phone. The Aida trial was a collaborative effort between Australian mobile content enabler m.Net Corporation Ltd and the Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy (CeNTIE). CeNTIE and m.Net are supported by the Australian Government through the Advanced Networks Program of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. CeNTIE is jointly funded by the CSIRO ICT Centre. During the trial, digital video content was successfully streamed via the internet through the m.Net 3G trial network to a 3G mobile phone using CSIRO’s Aida video streaming software. The Aida application allows 3G mobile phone users to search for clips of video based on textual queries, watch their selection and then hyperlink to other clips or to further rich content such as games or music. Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, the Aida project leader, says that the applications of Aida are wide and varied. “Aida can be used to access entertainment such as movies and news clips, but it also has many practical applications such as streaming medical information, environmental measurements, network load statistics – any time-continuous data,” says Dr Pfeiffer. Aida uses the CSIRO-developed Continuous Media Markup Language (CMML). CMML does for time-continuous media what HTML does for text. It allows the user to search, access, navigate and query. “Aida provides a more interactive interface than any current video streaming application. To our knowledge, Aida is the first high quality video streaming application from internet to 3G networks with enriched video content,” says Dr Pfeiffer. Now that Aida has been successfully trialled over a 3G network, the next step is to develop commercial applications. CSIRO is currently negotiating to develop a 3G movie preview service ready for launch around the middle of next year. More Information: Lisa Walker, Communication Officer CSIRO ICT Centre +61 2 9372 4605 or 0425 722 588 lisa.walker@csiro.au Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, Aida Project Leader CSIRO ICT Centre +61 2 9372 4180 silvia.pfeiffer@csiro.au Images of Aida are available at www.ict.csiro.au/mediapics
