Prototype to be demonstrated at Congress

Films, unlike books, don’t come with an index. That means anyone trying to search out a particular visual or piece of dialogue often has to watch the whole film to find it – an unwieldy and time-consuming process.

Now imagine computer software that lets anyone – researchers, journalists or individuals – search a film for dialogue or images in seconds.

Adele Reinhartz of the University of Ottawa and her team are well on their way to making that concept a reality. They will be demonstrating a prototype film-searching software at Congress 2009. And their hope is to get funding to complete its development.

Dr. Reinhartz teaches at the University of Ottawa’s Department of Classics and Religious Studies. She got interested in film-searching software through her work as a biblical scholar.

Many contemporary films use images from the Bible, as well as biblical quotations and biblical motifs. But as a researcher looking for those images and quotations, she found her work was hampered by her inability to search films rapidly for relevant material.

“Most people don’t even bother to search film because it’s such a time-consuming process,” she said.

To find a solution to her dilemma, Dr. Reinhartz teamed up with people from the university’s Department of Engineering on a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Their goal is to create software with the ability to search film for both dialogue and images.

The software would, naturally, have applications well beyond the Bible and could eventually be used by anyone, for anything.

Reinhartz says their work on dialogue-searching software is far enough advanced for them to demonstrate it at Congress.

“We’re still in the development process, but we’re at the point where I want to show my colleagues where we’re at,” she said, explaining that she and her colleagues will have several films on hand and be inviting members of the audience to give them things to search for.

They’ll also be looking to the audience for suggestions to improve their product.

Searching for visuals and images is the next challenge, said Reinhartz, adding that they will be seeking funding to develop the image-searching software.