A database for the Montreux Jazz Archive

STAR 2013 - 18.01.2013

Jean Rossier

The MJF archive

• Concert recordings (circa 5000 hours of audio and video)

• BUT also: metadata• set lists (songs)• musicians on stage• instruments played• issues during a concert• ...

• Photos• Rights (legal)

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The richness of the archive

• Digitalizing the concerts is the first step, but it is not sufficient

• Metadata is necessary to exploit the richness of the archive

• Any active and deep exploration of the archive relies on metadata

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The richness of the archive - schema

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instruments

musicians songs

concert

rightholders

source tapes

sourcequality

audio files

digital quality LTO

audio problems

video problems

video files

digitalization

Multiple partners

• Multiple partners are involved in the Montreux Jazz digital project

• Each partner provides some part of the metadata

• At beginning of the project, information was spread around

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Spread metadata

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instruments

musicians songs

concert

rightholders

source tapes

sourcequality

audio files

digital quality LTO

audio problems

video problems

video files

digitalization

Vectracom

Montreux Sounds EPFL

MJF

Single reference point

• We started to build a central database that would be the single reference point

• This database is hosted in EPFL and managed by the MMC team

• All existing information has been imported and consolidated in the central database

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The MJF archive as a model

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concert

songs

...

usage rights

...

recorded medias

audio files video files

quality

LTO

...

AV problems

...

instruments

...

rightholders

...

quality control

...

musicians

...

Multiple partners - single database

• Each partner of the project provides some part of the metadata

• Partners insert metadata independently• All metadata is aggregated in the

central database

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Interacting with the database

• Constraints:• Partners access the database remotely• Inserted data must be constrained (to

avoid meaningless data)• Accesses must be monitored and

controlled

• We built a custom web application to access the database

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Web application details

• Web application developed in Scala, using the Lift web framework

• Scala is a language created at EPFL• MySQL database

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Application layers

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MJF  Research  portal

other  apps

IT  infrastructure

MJF  Database

MJF  DB  API  (REST)

MJF  DigitalizaJon MJF  Rights

MySQL

ScalaWeb services

Partners interfaces

• Specific interfaces for each partner:• Insertion• Update• Search

• Partners only have access to some parts of the data

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MJF  Research  portal

other  apps

MJF  DigitalizaJon MJF  Rights

Digitalization data

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Quality control data

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Rights data (legal)

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Video previews

• Every digitalized video can be previewed via the web application

• A low quality format of each video is encoded

• The preview is played using Sublime Video, an HTML5 video player developed at EPFL

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Demo: video preview

Photos

• We are currently working on integrating the photos into the database

• ~ 100’000 photos to archive• As other data, the photos are linked to

existing items in the database (e.g.: concerts, artists, rights)

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Search interface

• Rich multi-criteria search interface

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Demo: search tool

Live from the festival

• From 2012, the application is used during the festival

• The MJF team inserts data directly in the database

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THANK YOU