Data Handling for VARS

Video Files

VARS uses the QuickTime API for reading Video files. So the file format must be QuickTime compatible (i.e. if you can open it with QuickTime VARS should be able to read it). Ideally, for EITS we would like the video files to be in a QuickTime container (e.g. .mov files) with a time-code track encoded with UTC time and flagged to enable streaming. Details can be found at EITS Video.

Time-code

I have code, that can read and write time-codes to .mov files, in a Java project called QTX4J. You can get the source code for this project from svn using:

svn checkout http://qtx4j.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ qtx4j-read-only

Snapshot builds of QTX4J are available in VARS's maven repository at http://vars.sourceforge.net/maven2/. You can include it in your maven project adding the depedency and repository information below to your pom.xml file.

...
<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>qt4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>qt4j</artifactId>
    <version>[0.10,)</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
  </dependency>
    ...
</dependencies>
...
</repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>VARS</id>
    <name>VARS Repository</name>
    <url>http://vars.sourceforge.net/maven2</url>
  </repository>
  ...
</repositories>

If you're not using Maven you can include QTX4J in your ant build script or download the jars directly from here. If you do download QTX4J manually, you will also need to install QuickTime for Java and fetch these dependencies:

• ImageJ: Optional. Used for frame-capture
• Foxtrot: Optional. Used by user interface code.
• MBARIX4J: Required (get the latest version)
• slf4j-api: Required
• vcr4j (get the latest version): Optional. Used by user interface code. If you include this you will also neet install RXTX

Example code for writing timecode to a movie can be found in org.mbari.qt.TimeUtil. A full example of adding a timecode track, flattening, and saving a file can be found in org.mbari.qt.TimeCodeTrackLifeCycleTest

Testing Resources

AVED processed data that is used for testing is currently hosted on Nanomia. Here's a few useful links:

• EITS test data processed by Ishbel: http://nanomia.shore.mbari.org/EITS_testing
• Test data with longer clips: http://nanomia.shore.mbari.org/EITS_testing/RESULTS
• RAID storage for Brian Schlining mapped to \\nanomia\RAID\brian: http://nanomia.shore.mbari.org/brian

VARS mini

VARS Mini