One of the main results of SCHEMA will be the design of a general architecture for content-based analysis, representation, content protection (watermarking), indexing and retrieval systems. The architecture will be module-based, distributed and expandable. It will define the interfaces between different modules and each partner will be able to use its own module. It will take into account the requirements produced from WP2.
The overall system diagram demonstrates how visual content is analyzed by independent modules belonging to three categories:
- audio-visual analysis modules producing visual segments (regions, objects) for which low-level features can be extracted (Qimera modules belong to this category),
- modules extracting higher-level descriptors characterizing content at a semantic level, e.g. modules determining whether an image or a clip is outdoor or indoor, whether it contains a face or not, whether it contains a specific soccer event such as goal, etc.,
- modules exploiting other modalities such as audio and text associated with the visual content.