Convera Helps NASA Manage Space Mission Digital Content in Real-Time
Convera
today announced that NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC)
has been using Convera’s Screening Room® video content management
technology to digitally capture and catalog nearly 550 hours of video
footage from the last two space shuttle missions, including the Space
Shuttle Atlantis STS-104 Mission and Space Shuttle Discovery STS-105
Mission.
JSC, responsible for recording, archiving, and providing
agency-wide access to video documenting Space Shuttle and
International Space Station missions, recently enlisted Convera to
assist in streamlining its video archiving and re-purposing efforts.
The majority of the mission footage (315 hours worth) was captured
and stored in real-time and made instantly accessible to NASA ground
control, engineers and scientists via the NASA intranet.
Convera’s Screening Room software, deployed at JSC in September
2000, ingested the live video feeds that were transmitted via one
Shuttle and four Space Station Ku-band satellite downlinks; created a
searchable database of video clips; and simultaneously published the
digitized content to NASA’s intranet.
Screening Room also was used to digitally capture and catalog
videotapes that were shot and carried back by crew members aboard the
Shuttle.
The mission footage contains lengthy scenes of the installation of
the U.S. Joint Airlock at the International Space Station, including
crew members conducting pressure and leak checks, as well as scenes of
five spacewalks from both missions, and more than two tons of
experiment hardware, food and logistical supplies being delivered.
NASA uses its video footage for real-time and post-mission
analysis, training, public educational programs, the production of
public affairs videos and for publishing content to the Internet and
NASA intranet. Footage from the missions is accessible to employees
from one centralized search interface via the NASA intranet.
The search interface, powered by Convera’s Screening Room, enables
employees to retrieve video clips by browsing a directory of mission
flight days. Users can perform key word searches (i.e. “docking
target,” “Joint Airlock hatch opening,” “Canadarm2”) or search by
entering data into pre-established search fields (i.e. “Mission ID,”
“GMT Time Code,” “Record Date,” etc.).
“We see NASA’s use of Convera’s solutions as a testament to the
value of using Screening Room to manage digital video content in the
government and corporate environment,” said Ben Plummer, senior vice
president, marketing, Convera. “NASA flight controllers, engineers,
scientists, and other personnel often need to be able to review video
documenting different events that occur at different times during one
or more missions. Convera’s Screening Room is ideal for providing the
necessary segment-level access to such an inter-related collection of
video.”
To date, Convera has helped JSC successfully capture over 2000
hours (or 250 Gigabytes) of video from eight Space Shuttle missions
and three Space Station Expedition missions.
About Convera’s Screening Room
Convera’s Screening Room provides scalable, high-performance
access to any video asset (analog or digital) from an ordinary Web
browser.
With Screening Room, users can automatically capture video; browse
visual summaries (called “storyboards”); catalog content using
metadata, annotations, closed caption text, and voice sound tracks;
search for precise video clips using text and image clues; and create
rough cuts and “Edit Decision Lists” for further production; and
publish those video assets to the Web for streaming.
Screening Room turns video assets into useful, profitable
resources in a cost-effective way.
About Convera
Convera, the new company formed when Excalibur Technologies
combined with Intel’s Interactive Media Services division, is a
leading provider of innovative software products that manage
multimedia digital content.
Convera’s advanced technologies, products, services and solutions
empower content owners to extract value from their high-worth digital
content–text, images and video–over the Internet, intranets, set top
boxes and wireless devices. Convera serves over 700 customers in 29
countries from its offices throughout the U.S. and Europe.
For more information, contact Convera at 800-788-7758, via e-mail
at info@convera.com or on the Web at www.convera.com.
The following are worldwide trademarks of Convera Corporation or
its subsidiary Convera Technologies, Inc.: Convera(TM),
RetrievalWare®, Screening Room® and their respective logos.
This release contains comments about Convera’s future
expectations, performance, plans and prospects as well as assumptions
about future events.
The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these
forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to
numerous factors and uncertainties, including without limitation,
business and economic conditions, continued success in technological
advances, and the risk that the businesses that were merged to create
Convera, the Interactive Media Services Division of Intel Corporation
and Excalibur Technologies, Inc., will not be integrated successfully.
Actual results may differ materially from our expectations as the
result of these and other important factors relating to Convera’s
business and product development efforts, which are further described
in Convera’s and Excalibur’s filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. These filings can be obtained from the SEC’s website
located at www.sec.gov.
Any forward-looking statements are based on information available
to Convera on the date of this release, and Convera assumes no
obligation to update such statements.
Contact:
Convera
John Murray, 703/761-3700
