Pilot-D Presentation and Deliverables 2014 & 2015
Pilot-D public Deliverables 2014 and 2015
Pilot-D Presentation, Objectives and HbbTV 2.0 advancements
Visual signing for audiovisual media makes such content accessible to individuals whose mother tongue is a sign language and not a written language. In many European countries, constitutional and legal provisions assure the availability of sign language on TV. Signing is important not only for mainstream programming and TV programming specifically for the signing communities in Europe and elsewhere but also emergency alerts on TV.
– Pilot-D objectives
The two core objectives of this sub-pilot respond to the above challenges:
1- Realise a prototype version of a complete sign language interpretation production workflow chain for broadcasters which enables basic (HbbTV1.1/1.5) and advanced (HbbTV 2.0) customised HbbTV sign language services.
2- Hbb/IP TV-based sign language services allowing users to customise size and positioning of sign language interpretation.
– Pilot-D & HBBTV 2.0
-
HbbTV 1.0 and 1.5
Within an HbbTV application a pre-mixed picture-in-picture video stream will be offered, that consists of a main TV video and a sign language video area. The application gets the video input from a video resource like a video server or a web server, where the pre-mixed video is located. A user can launch the signer application from a generic HbbTV launcher bar, which is standard service offering of German public broadcasters. A prototypical implementation will be ready by August 2015. HBB4ALL is considering using the HbbTV 1.5 MPEG-DASH profile for live streaming to offer the sign language interpreter service on demand via broadband. An implementation based on HbbTV 1.5 has additional advantages over the HbbTV 1.0 streaming with MPEG-TS over a single HTTP connection, such as a much wider CDN support.
-
HBBTV 2.0
A potential enhancement can be considered by integrating a true hybrid provision of this signing service. That would include the IP-based provision of only the sign language video and the DVB-based transmission of the main TV video. Both videos would have to be synchronised via the multi-stream synchronisation feature of an HbbTV 2.0 terminal. Only this approach would allow offering a customizable HbbTV Signer Application. The user could change size and position of the interpreter area on the TV. Furthermore this approach would minimise bandwidth and hosting space. The described solution, however, would require:
a) a finalised HbbTV 2.0 specification defining synchronisation of different media streams,
b) the timelinebased enhancement of both video streams to be synchronised,
c) available HbbTV 2.0 terminals with the multi-stream synchronisation feature and supporting two video decoders.
At the current moment, however, it looks highly unlikely that implementations are available for a large scale trial until the start of the pilot phase in August 2015.