X-Presenter: a tool for video-based hypermedia applications

Long video sequences can be difficult to navigate by adopting usual video players, based on VTR-like controls and linear sliders. Hierarchical indexes, i.e. multilevel tables of contents structured in topics and subtopics linked to the corresponding video sub-sequences, can be very effective to support the user browsing long videos, but, in general, the effort required to index the video sequences is resource-intensive (in terms of required skills, hardware and software) and time-consuming. In the paper we propose X-Presenter, a tool to easily create hierarchically indexed video sequences (hypervideos) in real-time. The hypervideos created with X-Presenter can be easily enriched with hypertextual and multimedia elements to produce effective hypermedia applications suitable both for on-line (the Web) and off-line (CD, DVD, Kiosks, ...) purposes.