FIAT/IFTA Innovation Award

Munich, August 13, 1997 - Digital Equipment GmbH, Munich, is sponsoring the FIAT/IFTA Innovation Award for the first time with DM 7,500 which will be presented in Budapest on Sept. 11, 1997. The award acknowledges innovative and creative ways of using archive material. The first award winner is the Albanian television producer Pluton Vasi with his contribution "Kenga - The Song" in which he portrays the historical and social development of his country using effective combinations of archive pictures and new material.

DIGITAL is sponsoring the award as a visual expression of its research and development program Euromedia which was developed in the European Applied Research Center, the CEC Karlsruhe. The CEC Karlsruhe researches and creates semi-automatic indexing tools for video data gateways which can make extensive and various material from radio and television archives accessible. Using these Web based tools, documentarians and editors are able to access digitized video data. Required data conversions are not performed until the data is actually accessed. The interfaces work so fast that interactive multimedia use is possible without any significant delay in time. Furthermore, DIGITAL designs network and server architectures for professional multimedia archives. DIGITAL is cooperating with the broadcasting stations SWF, SDR, BBC, ORF and SVT as well as the groups EMPTIC, Helix 5, ITC/IRST and TecMath on the project Euromedia.

CEC Karlsruhe has been testing and developing software technology for distributed computer systems since 1987. In 1995 the CEC Karlsruhe, through support of the EC, was expanded to become the European center for applied research of the entire group and now bears the title, European Applied Research Center. Since then, a particular matter of concern for CEC Karlsruhe has been considering European requirements and standards for future software developments in the areas of "Internet protocols, professional multimedia archives, virtual companies and electronic commerce."

The CEC Karlsruhe attaches particular importance to market related research. DIGITAL is responsible for the scientific orientation and determining the areas of concentration. Every project is conducted jointly with the customers. Together, prototypes are developed which are then used in trial projects. If they prove successful, DIGITAL continues development until the prototype becomes a marketable commodity. Special attention is given to technology transfer.

Dr. Lutz Heuser,
Director Strategic Technology
Application and Research (STAR)