The ToCAI description scheme for indexing and retrieval of multimedia documents

In this work, a framework, called Table of Content-Analytical Index (ToCAI), for the content description of multimedia material is presented. The idea for such a description scheme (DS) originates from the structures used for indexing technical books (table of content and analytical index). This description scheme provides therefore a hierarchical description of the time sequential structure of a multimedia document (ToC), suitable for browsing, together with an “Analytical Index” (AI) of audio-visual objects of the document, suitable for effective retrieval. Besides other two sub-description schemes for the category and the description of the meta-data associated to the multimedia document are enclosed in the general DS. The detailed structure of the DS is presented by means of UML notation as well, and an application example is shown.