Getting Started With Videolyzer

What's Videolyzer?

Videolyzer is an application that helps people such as bloggers or journalists collect, organize, and present information about the quality of videos. It is designed to make it easy to organize things like comments, claims, and sources. Users can comment and annotate pieces of the video (called "anchors") for a more fine-grained description of the information in the video. Videolyzer also allows for collaboration among many people. Users can build off of each other's annotations and rate each other. This collective analysis is then presented in a way that brings all of the ratings and comments together so that well supported information appears green, and unsupported information appears red.

What's the Transcript View?

The transcript view shows several pieces of information layered over the video's transcript. This is a special transcript; it's synched to the timeline of the video so that anything you see on the transcript can also appear on the timeline.

The transcript view shows:

Positions of different anchors attached to the transcript. These are shown as gray boxes. The darkness of the gray indicates how many annotations are attached to that anchor. When you mouse over an anchor, it outlines the anchor and pops up a little orange bubble showing the number of annotations attached there.
Positions of various markers that have been automatically detected to help with the analysis. It shows what the computer thinks are claims, people's names, references to money, comparisons, and finally where faces have been detected in the video. Because these things are automatic, they are imperfect, but they may give some some ideas about where to look for interesting information in the video. The types of markers are all color coded according to the labelled check boxes at the bottom.

What's on the Timeline?

The Timeline is there to help you navigate the video and it's annotations. There are 4 levels to the timeline, with their labels shown at the right of the timeline.

The "Navigation" level is like a normal timeline where you can drag the marker to position the playhead of the video.
The "Video" level shows how the colors in the video change over time. It can be helpful for seeing where the video transitions.
The "Markers" level shows the same automatically detected markers as are seen on the transcript view, but shows them on the timeline.
The bottom most level, "Anchors" shows areas of the video that have been marked for annotation. The darker the marker, the more annotations have been added there.

What's the Annotation View

The Annotation View is where you comment on and analyze the video. It shows:

The currently filtered set of annotations on the video or on the selected anchor. The number of annotations is shown in the top label. Each annotation is labelled according to what it is (e.g. comment, claim, source etc.) as well as who made it, when they made it, and how many responses the annotation has gotten.
The color of the annotation indicates how much support it has. Red is less support and green is more.
If an annotation is unvetted (hasn't been checked up on), it's label is in gray rather than black.

How do I use the Transcript View?

Browsing and Selecting Anchors. The Transcript View can be used to browse current annotations or to find interesting new places to make annotations.

To browse annotations, make sure you're in the "select" mode in the tools bar. Hovering the pointer over an anchor shows a popup with the number of annotations attached to that anchor as well as the starting frame and the ending frame of the anchor.
Click a marker to select it; it turns orange and filters the annotation view to the annotations on that anchor.
There can also be annotations that aren't attached to an anchor; they apply to the whole video. To see these, click anywhere on the transcript view where there is not an anchor.

Creating and Deleting Anchors.

To make a new anchor on the transcript, go to the tools bar and click the "marking" mode button. Now when you mouse over the transcript view, you can drag out an area where you'd like to make your anchor.
Position the cursor over either end of the anchor and when the icon changes you can click and drag to resize it.
If you change your mind, go to the tools bar and click the "delete" mode button. Then click the anchor that you want to delete.

How do I use the Timeline

Navigating.

To navigate with the timeline you can click or drag anywhere on the navigation level of the timeline just like a normal video player.
When you hover the mouse over the timeline, the frame at that point is shown in the video window. Also, the 3 words of transcript around that point in time are shown in a little popup above the timeline. This is to help you navigate through the video better.
If you mouse over an anchor on the "Anchors" level, you'll see the starting and ending frames for that anchor.

Creating and Deleting Anchors.

To create a new anchor select the "Marking" mode from the tools bar and then drag out a new anchor on the "Anchors" level of the timeline. Anchors can be resized by dragging their end points or they can be shuffled back and forth.
If there are multiple overlapping anchors, you can hit the options button and select "Stack Markers" to visually separate them.
You can delete an anchor by selecting the "Delete" mode from the tool bar and then clicking the anchor to delete. If you have permission to delete the anchor you can confirm the deletion.

Resizing.

To resize the timeline mouse over the bottom part of it until the icon changes to a resize icon. Then drag the timeline until it's of the desired size.

How do I use the Annotation View?

Making Annotations. There are several ways to make annotations in Videolyzer. You can add annotations to the whole video or to specific anchors that you or others have created.

To add a comment to the whole video, click the timeline or transcript (not an anchor) and then hit the "Make a Comment" button in the Annotation View. This adds the comment to the whole video.
To make a comment on a particular anchor first select that anchor. Then hit the "Make a Comment" button. If the anchor represents a claim being made in the video, you can hit the "Mark as a Claim" button.
Once the annotation has been initially added, its options are listed as a row of buttons at the right of it. The options will vary depending on what type of annotation it is as well as whether or not it's your own annotation or someone else's. For instance, you can add a source which supports a claim in the video.

Responding to Annotations. If you see a comment or annotation that someone else has made you can respond to it and rate it with tags. As more and more people add responses to the system, the support of each statement is updated. Again, more support is shown green and less support in red.

To respond to an annotation look at the options available for that annotation on it's title bar. For instance, to a claim you could add tags such as "invalid" or "inaccurate"

What Kinds of Annotations Can I Make?

There is a range of annotation types that you can add, summarized here:

Annotation	Description Of Use
Comment	Comments are the generic way of adding an annotation and can be added to the whole video or to an anchor.
Claim	Claims are statements made in the video onto which can be layered comments. Only anchors can be labelled as claims.
Source	A Source can be a document or person that supports a piece of information.
Reaction	Do you Agree or Disagree? Or maybe you agree, but with some caveats (that's a hedge).
Reason	Support your decision to add a particular source, comment or reaction. Add a reason.
Quality Tags	These are shown to the left. They include things like validity, accuracy, subjectivity, relevancy, clarity, fairness, and context. Also, free tags are permitted in the free tag edit box.
Bias Tags	These are used to call out bias information such as stereotyping, missing information, or political bias.
Collab Tags	These are used to coordinate with other people using the system. You can mark something as "needing review" or as "needing a source". If you add these tags others will be able to search more easily for the annotations that need to be checked up on.

How do I filter the Annotation View?

Filtering Annotations. If there are too many annotations in the annotation view, you can filter the result using the "Annotation Filters" tool bar at the top. Filters hide anchors that don't have annotations contained in the filter. Also note that you still need to select an anchor to see the filtered annotations on it.

First, you can specify what set of annotations to select from.

All: Selects from all annotations
My: Selects just the annotations you have added
Feeling Lucky: Selects a random subset of all annotations
Highly Rated: Selects only those annotations with a fair amount of support
Unvetted: Selects those annotations which haven't been responded to
Contentious: Selects controversial annotations which have some support but which have also been refuted.

Next you can specify which tags to filter for by making selections in the tags palette.
Finally, you can type a keyword to filter for (this only filters annotations and doesn't affect the transcript).
You can quickly turn the filter on and off by checking the "Filter Active" button. Even when you filter some annotations out, they're still visible but grayed out so you can follow the context of the discussion.

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