Minutes from EITS teleconference on 2007-04-11

Attendees: Brian Schlining, [~erikar], Danelle Cline, [~linda], Duane Edgington and [~jerome]

Notes

[~linda]

• Lonny Lundsten went CenSeam meeting
  • Seamount group is interested in VARS/AVED
  • Tim Shank at WHOI is workin on AVED-like system called fishrock (sp?)
  • Ray Williams (in Tasmania) is using saliency for scallop work.
  • From Lonny:

    I just wanted to give you all a quick update on the CenSeam (http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/) Image Analysis Standardization Workshop I went to last week. I'll try to summarize the key points with a bulleted list:

    • I presented an overview of VARS and a bit of my thesis data. My talk was well received and people were very impressed with VARS.
    • In regards to VARS: We need to contact Chris Kelley at Hurl (free trip to Hawaii anyone?) to get him set-up and running with VARS - he's currently using excel and was blown away with VARS! Kerry Howell (University of Plymouth) and Fernando Tempera (University of Azores) have attempted to get VARS up and running, but struggled with the install. I tried troubleshooting Kerry's system while at the meeting, but was unable to get it running for her (although I took the code from her computer and got it running on my Mac). Alan Williams (CSIRO) is actually using VARS and has been working with Brian already. David Bowden (NIWA) has got VARS running, but is not currently using it. He wanted to know if VARS is compatible with PostgreSQL and I told him that it probably is but that I would have Brian contact him. I demoed VARS for a few people using the latest version by annotating some .mov files that were on my computer - they were pretty impressed.
    • I took on the task of coming up with the still image metadata standard which will include a standardized set of data to log and a recommendation on where and how to log the data (db, exif, etc.) This is due in one month and I've contacted Mike McCann and John Graybeal about helping me out.
    • The CenSeam group was very impressed with both AVED (I played a demo clip) and VARS and requested a paragraph describing AVED's capabilities for an upcoming CenSeam newsletter. The blurb about AVED should include a link to AVED at MBARI's homepage which will hopefully be updated with the current status and demonstration video clips. I was very clear that AVED is only capable of recognizing interesting events and that the technology is still being actively developed. At the same time I started thinking that if we get this task accomplished in a timely manner, we could provide and additional paragraph describing VARS with links to the VARS website etc. The idea being that we could highlight VARS in one newsletter and AVED in the next. I think it would be good exposure for both projects. What do you think? I've asked Linda to work with the AVED group and Nancy to take care of VARS.

    CenSeam requested a the link to our ROV configuration webpage and some info on our expedition db schema. I'll take care of these two tasks as well.

[~jerome]

• Nearly done upgrading saliency. Ready to deploy it.

Danelle Cline

• Audio track from EITS videos may be dropped during transcoding
• Setting up workflow process is slow. Finalizing setup
  • ASF movie container supplied by Leed doesn't seem to confrom to spec.
  • Movie format is a headache but we can work with it.
  • Movies will be 30 minute clips
  • Movies grow during conversion even though there is no change in compression. (from about 300MB to 400MB+) Not sure why. We'll need to keep an eye on it.
• Would like to go to Florida to become familar with EITS setup/integration
  • Maybe go right after their test tank deployment.

Duane Edgington

• MARS keeps getting postponed.
  • Waiting on Alcatel power system. They will deliver a prototype to MBARI and a production system to VENUS/NEPTUNE. Expect to get production system at MBARI eventually.
  • WHOI systems for MARS may not be acceptable; it's being evaluated. There's no money currently allocated to address issues with this system.

Brian Schlining

• Are we using JIRA to track tasks and issues for this project?
  • Duane Edgington Use it for issue tracking. Concerns that it doens't integrate with other tools, such as microsoft project, may not be appropriate for task tracking.
• Will start working on AUV port soon. Limited amount of time to devote to EITS for a while.
• Working on streamlining builds fo VARS for external users.