Tool for multimodal annotation (audio, video).

warning: Documentation update is in progress...

Author: University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic. (Pavel Campr / campr@kky.zcu.cz, Milan Herbig / herbig@students.zcu.cz)

Windows binaries can be downloaded from http://tovian.zcu.cz/packages/tovian_win32_stable.zip in a single ZIP file.

Unzip the file in your destination folder. Copy file config.ini.dist to config.ini. Open config.ini and edit the configuration values (mainly the database url), which should be given by the administrators. The application is now ready to run.

warning: Due to an uknown bug, the destination folder or its parental folders cannot contain special characters and diacritical marks.

Currently no Linux binaries are provided.

The application was tested with MySQL and SQLite database engines.

MySQL is expected to be running on a central server. The annotators connect to the same server and share data. Database url in config.ini has this form:

database.url: mysql://database_user:database_password@server/database_name?charset=utf8

Note: Please note ?charset=utf8 at the end, which prevents some problems with encoding.

SQLite can be used for local usage without network connection to a central database server. Database url in config.ini has this form:

database.url: sqlite:///data/tovian.db

Note: The path data/tovian.db is relative. You can specify full path: sqlite:////absolute/path/to/tovian.db

To create new database (database name e.g. tovian_dopanar), execute this SQL command in your database engine:

CREATE DATABASE `tovian_dopanar`;

One user for administration, one for annotators.

Admin user has full access to all tables. Normal user, used by annotators, has read-only access to all tables and write access to tables annotation_values and annotation_objects.

Create admin user with full access to the database (user name e.g. tov_dopanar_adm, password 111):

USE `tovian_dopanar`;

CREATE USER 'tov_dopanar_adm'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '111';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON tovian_dopanar.* TO 'tov_dopanar_adm'@'%';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Create limited user with read-only access to all tables and write access to annotation tables (user name e.g. tov_dopanar_user, password 222):

USE `tovian_dopanar`;

CREATE TABLE `annotation_values` (`foo` int NOT NULL);
CREATE TABLE `annotation_objects` (`foo` int NOT NULL);
CREATE TABLE `logs` (`foo` int NOT NULL);

CREATE USER 'tov_dopanar_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '222';
GRANT SELECT, SHOW VIEW ON tovian_dopanar.* TO 'tov_dopanar_user'@'%';
GRANT DELETE, INSERT, REFERENCES, SELECT, SHOW VIEW, UPDATE ON tovian_dopanar.annotation_values TO 'tov_dopanar_user'@'%';
GRANT DELETE, INSERT, REFERENCES, SELECT, SHOW VIEW, UPDATE ON tovian_dopanar.annotation_objects TO 'tov_dopanar_user'@'%';
GRANT DELETE, INSERT, REFERENCES, SELECT, SHOW VIEW, UPDATE ON tovian_dopanar.logs TO 'tov_dopanar_user'@'%';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

DROP TABLE `annotation_objects`, `annotation_values`, `logs`;

Note: Two temporary tables were created do allow granting the priviliges to these tables, which are dropped after. These tables will be created automatically again in the next step.

Update database urls in file config.ini:

• In section [DEFAULT], use database.url with the limited user (as in example above, tov_dopanar_user).
• In section [admin], use database.url with the admin user (as in example above, tov_dopanar_adm).

Tables are automatically created by commandline task:

tovian_cli init_db

Some default data must be loaded into the database:

tovian_cli init_default_data

The database is now fully initialized and ready to use.

Before annotation, annotator accounts and information about annotated videos must be added to database.

Edit directly the annotators database table, or use interactive commandline task:

tovian_cli add annotator

Edit directly the videos table, or use interactive commandline task:

tovian_cli add video

To assign video for annotator, use interactive commandline task:

tovian_cli add video_for_annotator

Now, annotator can execute tovian_gui and start annotation of assigned videos.