BETT 09 Exclusive New Technology Preview – Roland Image Mining

BETT, Olympia, January 14-17, 2008, stand W41 (upstairs)

December 22, 2008 - Press Dispensary - A remarkable new technology that enables rapid searching of films (and other moving images) for specific content is being unveiled at BETT 09 in a series of exclusive preview demonstrations. The technology, under the working title ‘Roland Image Mining™’, will be demonstrated hourly throughout BETT on stand W41 - The Roland Collection – and is due to be launched in summer 2009.

The development of Roland Image Mining is a joint venture between The Roland Collection - an unrivalled British archive of films on art which is also being shown on stand W41 - and Content Interface Corporation (CIC) of Toronto.

In assembling and digitising its very large anthology of films, The Roland Collection has faced up to the unanswered question of how humans can search lengthy sequences of moving images (say, a 50 minute film containing 75,000 separate frames) for particular content - whole scenes, still frames or even individual details within frames – without laboriously indexing the footage first. For example, how does an art student rapidly search a dozen half-hour films on Surrealism for the few frames of footage that show the face of Magritte? It’s a question which for years has plagued the minds of filmmakers and search specialists, not least the boffins at Google. And it’s a crucial question for students, researchers, archivists and teachers.

Roland Image Mining is the answer - and its first public demonstrations will be on the Roland Collection stand at BETT.

The Roland Collection founder and curator, Anthony Roland – himself an established film director - says: “This capability to search through films without having to index them first – to mine moving images for their detailed content – simply hasn’t existed before. We expect it to revolutionise the way film and video footage is researched and handled – and we’re starting that revolution at BETT.”

Roland Image Mining offers tremendous possibilities for students, researchers, librarians and teachers in virtually any discipline that might use films, TV programmes and videos as source material. It makes visual productions as easy to search electronically as written documents, without the current need to plough through an entire production in fast-forward. In the course of research, they can quickly find the exact spot in a film or TV programme that they need or can index the production in a fraction of the time currently taken.

Roland Image Mining also offers equally great possibilities for others who work professionally with film and TV programmes, including film students, film makers, editors and archivists.

Anthony Roland adds: “We expect Roland Image Mining to have an impact on everyone who deals with moving images and has experienced the limitations of searching footage in linear form. Digital film has been around for a while but searching through it continues to be largely a linear experience. Finally, with Roland Image Mining, rapid non-linear searching is a reality.”

Journalists interested in Roland Image Mining can guarantee places at the BETT demonstrations – or arrange individual demonstrations - by visiting stand W41 or by contacting Rob Shepherd on 0845 430 4433.

Journalists who won’t be attending BETT should contact Rob for further information.

- Ends -

Roland Image Mining is being jointly developed by The Roland Collection, England, and Content Interface Corporation (CIC), Toronto, and will be formally launched in summer 09.

The Roland Collection is the world’s largest independent collection of films on art and modern literature. Unrivalled in scope and depth, it brings together around 500 titles - most of them available for download online - with a production value of more than GBP £80 million. A considerable learning resource, The Roland Collection has full non-theatrical rights in all its films and, in addition to their online availability, can license them for a variety of uses.

Anthony Roland, founder and curator, himself directed 16 of the films in the Collection. Since then, the Roland Collection has become a life’s work, but not his only work, by any means: Roland has also been the guiding hand behind several major artistic initiatives, including the giant 16 screen art arena, ‘Artscope’, which has toured the Edinburgh Festival, Washington and New York; ‘Caress’, a three acre, 60 ton sculpture near Kingston, New York; and the millennium installation of ‘Talking Trees’ in London’s Regent’s Park. Roland Image Mining is his latest project.

Roland will be available on stand W41 for interviews.

The BETT demonstration will be facilitated by a large touch screen, MediaTouch ™, provided by Optimum Conseils & Solutions of Nanterre, France.

For further information, please contact:
Rob Shepherd, Press Dispensary press officer
Tel: 0845 430 4433
Email:



Anthony Roland
The Roland Collection
Tel: 01797 230 421
Email:
Site: http://www.rolandcollection.com