About Computers and Videos

Do you believe that your personal computer is able to play videos?
I do not or I did not until I visited the Centre Départemental de Documentation Pédagogique d'Annecy (CDDP).
"What has this to do with videos on my personal computer?" you might ask. From a very superficial point of view not an awful lot. At first glance the CDDP seems to be one of those centres that support teachers with pedagogical material on paper, audio or video cassettes and CD-ROMs. The centre holds a documentation about this material in the form of catalogues and also develops educational, interactive CD-ROMs.
Except for the beautiful location in Annecy nothing in this centre seems to be extraordinary or has anything to do with videos on personal computers. There must be something behind the scene and really at a second glance a fascinating opportunity hidden behind the abbreviation MEEL becomes visible.
MEEL, the "Multimediathèque Educative En Ligne", an online multimedia library is an ambitious research project that will not only make videos accessible on screen but will allow for the real time replay without download to a hard disk.
"Impossible" you will say, "even with the fastest modem it takes ages to download the 1.2 gigabytes necessary to play a 1 1/2 hour video." But the research consortium, formed by the "Plate-form Universitaire Multimedia"(PUMMA) (application development) of the University of Savoie and the CDDP (network provider),  technically supported by Lyonnaise Câble and Alex Informatique (server provider), has found means to circumvent this problem.
The idea is simple but extraordinary. The data is transported via the TV cable network. This improves speed and guarantees excellent quality data transport. A big step towards establishment of constant lines to connect personal computers with the world wide web - that many users expect to be established in the near future - is done.
The video server, however, is not the only target of MEEL. The program intends to install a whole system of technical tools but also of possible users.

The technical side will innovate three main aspects

The usage side intends to These short term goals are open to further evolution, possible future perspectives have already been pointed out MEEL seems to offer an excellent opportunity to improve the accessibility of multimedia files through a public network, however, problems like copyright and security may come up ...

©, Marion Hachmann-Gleixner (23/03/99) staf 13/ updated 26/03/99
gleixner@smile.ch