From: Charlie Barans [baransc@mrd.dnr.state.sc.us] Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 6:13 AM To: Edgington, Duane Cc: George Sedberry Subject: Fw: VARS software IIII Dear Dr. Edgington, I apologize for my rather rough and frank thoughts that were ment to be sent to Dr. Sedberry the PI of the Fisheries Video project. In my early morning stuper, I hit reply rather than forward. My suggestions to George stand, and I sincerely hope that you find further funding for such a future looking and worthwhile project that would indeed assist us greatly. I believe that we might have been able to assist at some minimal funding level, if our budget was still the normal $50 K/yr, but the ONR has cut funding to our provider SEACOOS and we have been asked to fund two years with carry over from one years ($50 K). I am affraid that fisheries has always been small potatoes in oceanography budgets. With this mistake, I am headed to retirement, so I wish you the best of luck and again am sorry for my e-mail that you received. Best Regards, Charlie B. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charlie Barans" To: "Edgington, Duane" Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 8:57 AM Subject: Re: VARS software II > George, this sounds very promising, although Dr. Edgington is also searching > for future funding. Maybe you could send him ten more video clips that have > different levels of complexity to keep up the focus on our needs. I could > check my list or we could talk about it. Although our/your time table can > match his needs, it is a shame that the prime player for your needs will be > out until just before his project ends. Maybe you should attempt a contact > with Dr. Witter for future reference and collaborations. I'll bet that she > gets a product before the project ends. Just a thought. Thanks, Charlie B. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Edgington, Duane" > To: "George Sedberry" > Cc: "Charlie Barans" ; "Edgington, Duane" > > Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 5:00 PM > Subject: RE: VARS software > > > > Dear Dr. Sedberry, > > I am sorry for the delay in answering your email. I have been out of the > office traveling, and then on vacation. > > We would be delighted to provide our software to SCDNR to help you with > assessing if a video clip from the fishwatch observatory system should > be examined by a scientist. The system is not at a state yet where such > a software transfer is practical, but it is one of our strong project > goals for the year to get our system to a state where we can transfer it > to other nonprofit research organizations, with our system running on a > normal desktop computer. > > We are currently working on enhancing our system to adapt it to fixed > camera observatory video. We are working with Dr. Edith Widder and her > group at Ocean Research & Conservation in Florida, and engineers at > Florida Atlantic University, to analyze video they collect from their > Eye-in-the-Sea low light intensified camera, which they are modifying > for fixed deployment on the MARS observatory in Monterey Bay. While > different in detail, their video is very similar to the FishWatch video > in many respects, and their problem of needing a "filter" to decide > which segments to analyze is most similar. > > Our main technical contributor to our MBARI project is out on maternity > leave. She is due back in July. I hope by the end of the summer to have > a release ready that we can provide to you. > > In the meantime, we can process another set of videos for you all, to > help us access what we need to do to the program to make it useful for > your application. A student in my group has been working on our system > over the last couple of months, and we are getting better results than > what we last shared with you all. > > I hope our timetable matches your needs, and that we can continue to > work together. > > This is the last year of funding from MBARI for our project -- our > management has told us we need to secure external funding to continue > our work beyond December 2006. If you see potential opportunities for > funding our effort, or see a collaborative funding opportunity, I would > very much appreciate hearing about it. > > Very best regards, > > Duane Edgington > http://www.mbari.org/staff/duane > http://www.mbari.org/AVED/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: George Sedberry [mailto:SedberryG@dnr.sc.gov] > Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2006 8:39 AM > To: Edgington, Duane > Cc: Charlie Barans > Subject: VARS software > > Dear Dr. Edgington, > > We hope that you have been doing fine and that your research is > coming along well. Ms. Jessica Stephen from our lab attended the VARS > workshop and returned with great reports of all the wonderful annotation > work that the MBARI staff is doing to organize video files for access, > recovery and analyses. However, she did not have the opportunity to talk > with you about your auto ID and counting software that we might be able > to adapt to our needs here with the thousands of 10 sec. video clips > that we have recorded. Would you be willing to share your cutting edge > software with SCDNR? Your process would be a vast improvement for us > over having to open up each video clip manually to see if it contains > any numbers of individuals or species. > > Thank you for all of your assistance and attempting to work with some of > our clips in the past. We look forward to hearing from you. > > Sincerely yours, > > George > > George R. Sedberry > Marine Resources Research Institute, SCDNR > P.O. Box 12559 > (217 Ft. Johnson Rd.) > Charleston SC 29412 > > Office: 843-953-9814 > Mobile: 843-607-3089 > Fax: 843-953-9820 > > South Atlantic Bight fish mapping: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/seageofish/ >