Search in audiovisual broadcast archives

Documentary makers, journalists, news editors, and other media professionals routinely require previously recorded audiovisual material for new productions. For example, a news editor might wish to reuse footage from overseas services for the evening news, or a documentary maker describing the history of the Christmas tradition might desire shots of Christmas trees recorded over the decades. One of the sources for reusable broadcasts is the audiovisual broadcast archive, which specializes in the preservation and management of audiovisual material. In this thesis we study search in audiovisual broadcast archives. Our approach is twofold, and accordingly the thesis is structured in two parts. In Part I we study the searcher, analyzing and simulating the recorded actions of media professionals searching in a national audiovisual broadcast archive. In Part II we study how the results of their searches may be improved through applying state-of-the- art methods in video retrieval. In this way the thesis gives insight both into how search is performed in the archive of today, and into what search may look like in the archive of tomorrow.