CAST
Content Analysis System for Television (CAST) owned by the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, was designed to serve not only as an archive of TV content, but also as a digital tool that might be applied in a process of coding and analysing audiovisual data.
The system works with DVB-S and DVB-T signal. It is later processed by a digital headend and multicasted into the LAN (approx. 20 concurrent TV channels, Polish and foreign). The signal is then recorded and stored, based on the EPG data. Speech found in videos are transcribed into text. The text to speech software is created and developed by Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre and is able to transcribe Polish language.
In particular, the software provides access to the following system functions and resources:
- selecting TV channels to be recorded
- ingesting video from other sources
- transcoding
- extensive search of all recorded material based on EPG and transcription
- editing of all metadata
- frame by frame video preview
- finding repeating video sequences (e.g. adverts)
- exporting selected video material
- exporting data for use with statistical software
- creating users and groups, with granular access control
The system allows access, not only to Polish but also foreign TV stations. This provides an opportunity for international cooperation, including projects on international comparative content analysis.
Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University. Agnieszka Stępińska
Designed by scholars for scholars, CAST is a perfect response to the academic challenges related to the Media Content studies. It allows to record and store the audio-visual content of television, as well as to select the samples for the studies conducted by scholars and students. Furthermore, it provides an online access to the database for all the research group members. It enables to launch or join international projects