Cue Points: A mechanism for audio resource browsing

1
Cue Points A mechanism for audio resource
browsing

• E. Brazil
• Interaction Design Centre
• University of Limerick
• Ireland

2
What are Cue Points ?

• Known under several names
• Seek Points
• Index Points
• Key Frames
• Metadata information which makes other data
  useful

3
Where do you find Cue Points ?

• Access Metadata
• Used for indexing, browsing and retrieval of data
• Found in file headers
• Readily Accessible
• Standardised Music File Formats

4
Idea for Research

• Use Cue Points as Marker Points
• Mark a specific point or section of a sound
• Play only significant portion of sound while
  browsing
• Allows for faster browsing

5
Support for Cue Points

• Found in many common sound file formats
• Implementation varies, no standard method
• Formats examined were aiff, mpeg 1 / 2 / 4 / 7,
  wave and ra.
• Technical Report UL-IDC-01-02

6
Conclusions of Examination

• A mechanism for coping with the increasing size
  of digital resource collections
• Already used in audio authoring applications
• Not used in applications for searching and/or
  browsing !

7
Links to Current Research

• Sonic Browser
• retrieval application used for browsing audio
  resources and for managing general sound
  resources
• Aims to incorporate the use of Cue Points into
  the Sonic Browser as additional browsing mechanism

8
Conclusions

• Adds a useful browsing mechanism to applications
• Reduce time to identify sound by playing
  characteristic or significant part
• Exploit existing file formats, many of which
  already support Cue Points

9
References

• Prothman, Meta data, IEEE Potentials, vol. 19,
  pp. 20 23, 2000.
• R. M. Warren, Auditory Perception - A new
  Analysis and Synthesis. Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press, 1999.
• E. Brazil, Cue Points An Examination Of Common
  Sound File Formats, UL-IDC-01-02, 2001.