The Clipper Project: Making online audio and video more usable

An update from the Clipper project that has been producing a toolkit for working with online time-based media using modern web annotation technologies. The aim of the project is to overcome some of the traditional barriers to... [ view full abstract ]

An update from the Clipper project that has been producing a toolkit for working with online time-based media using modern web annotation technologies. The aim of the project is to overcome some of the traditional barriers to using online audio and video for education and training through using recent advances in web standards. The Clipper toolkit enables users to create, organise and share ‘virtual’ clips from online audio and video resources without copying or altering the original file. Users find resources they want to clip and specify a start and stop point to create the virtual clip, they then add their notes to the clip and it is saved into a NoSQL database in JSON-LD format that also provide a URI for each clip – so each clip has a unique and persistent identifier that is also a web address. The application uses a data model developed by the W3C Web Annotation Working Group, supporting interoperability, export and archiving of data for re-use.

Clipper enables users to create clips from different source files and organise them together into ‘cliplists’ and share the individual clips or entire cliplists. This approach ensures that users do not have to do any physical editing or copying of the original resources and those resources can stay in their original locations. It also respects and enforces the access controls applied by the owner of the original resource. This means a shared clip will be only accessible to other users who have the required permissions – meeting privacy, data protection, security requirements and copyright obligations. The combination of JSON-LD and a URI can support a range of linked data, semantic web and big data applications, including new assessment models and sources of analytics; important for vocational education.

More information about the project can be found here http://blog.clippertube.com