Marius B. Spinu

Cooperative visual manipulation of music notation

As computer technologies and their potential emerging applications spread out, new needs have been detected for computer-based applications of music; cooperative music notation editing both in orchestras and music schools is one of them. This article is the only public document describing the details of cooperative work on music notation of MOODS (Music Object Oriented Distributed System). MOODS is a synchronous real-time cooperative editor for music scores. Its architecture includes mechanisms for troubleshooting conflicts in real-time, managing histories of commands and versioning, and for performing selective undo. The system also includes specific solutions in order to control the editing on the account of editing permission profiles. The most important aspects of MOODS associated with cooperative work on music notation scores are reported herein. The article highlights the general problems of cooperative systems and provides rationales for the solutions, which were found to build MOODS. The MOODS system has been implemented and validated thanks to the endeavor of several musicians in orchestras, music schools, and project partners. A prototype has been demonstrated in public at the Scala Theatre in Milan, Italy.

Watermarking Music Sheets

Watermarking allows hiding information into digital objects such as images, videos, audio files and text pages. Hidden codes can be used to demonstrate the ownership of the digital objects in case of copyright infringement verification. Most of the commonly used applications of watermark are referred to color or b/w images. In this paper, an analysis of specific innovative techniques for watermarking music scores is presented. The analysis was performed on the basis of the requirements highlighted by the user group of the European Project WEDELMUSIC. The discussion reported in this paper has been performed taking into account the skills of musicians in detecting changes in the music sheets. This work can be useful for other researchers that would like to work in this area.

Multimedia music distribution and sharing among mediateques, archives and their attendees

Archives of mediateques, theatres, music schools, conservatories, universities, etc., are the most important sources of cultural heritage. Such institutions are interested in digitizing content to (i) improve the service towards their attendees, thus increasing the number of collections provided, (ii) add new functionalities to the service already provided, (iii) save fragile materials otherwise settled to time deterioration, such as tapes, disks, documents, etc. Publishers are interested in digitizing only content that guarantees a certain return of investment and at the same time they are inclined to limit the distribution of the content located in archives, so as to control its exploitation and to preserve the content ownership. WEDELMUSIC has been defined to allow content providers to share and distribute interactive music in the respect of the owners rights. This means that networks of content sharing Mediateques can arise while respecting the owners rights. Consequently, solutions, models and tools were defined and developed, including adequate protection and monitoring solutions.

Watermarking music sheets while printing

Watermarking allows hiding of information in digital objects such as images, videos, audio files and text pages. These techniques are adopted to hide codes that can be used to demonstrate the digital objects ownership in case of verification of copyright infringement. A novel technique for watermarking music in the phase of music sheet printing is presented. The solution was obtained by taking into account the skills of musicians in detecting changes in the music sheets. A validation of the results obtained has been performed by using technical verification of robustness and a group of experts.

A high capacity technique for watermarking music sheets while printing

Most of the commonly used watermark applications are referred to color or black and white pictorial images. Watermarking techniques are adopted to hide codes that can be used to demonstrate the ownership of the digital objects in case of copyright infringement verification. A technique for watermarking music scores/sheets is presented. The solution has been defined to satisfy specific user requirements. These have been collected by using the expert user group of the European Project WEDELMUSIC. They took into account the capability of musicians in detecting changes in the music sheets. The approach has been validated by using experts and technical experiments.

Execution and synchronisation of music score pages and real performance audios

Among the emerging applications of music scores we can see production and adoption of multimedia digital objects based on music score for distance learning/tuition of music, etc. In these applications, the music notation model has to provide distinct mechanisms for modeling symbolic and visual aspects of music and for defining the relationships among such aspects and in particular between music scores and audio files of real performance. This paper explains the capabilities of WEDELMUSIC regarding the synchronization and execution of music scores synchronous with audio files. The functionality is supported by a free music editor: www.wedelmusic.org. The tool has been developed during the WEDELMUSIC IST Research project funded by the European Commission.

AXMEDIS as the Service Oriented Architecture for the Media: Is It Feasible?

This paper focuses on the suitability of AXMEDIS framework as the reference architecture for implementing a service oriented architecture (SOA) in the field of the media, considering that AXMEDIS suitability to SOA concepts is not in the AXMEDIS project original aims. Current AXMEDIS architecture and future improvement are analyzed in order to establish the processes that can bring AXMEDIS in the condition of becoming a real reference point in the SOA panorama relating to the media industry.

Content Enrichment for Semi-Automated Production of Added Value Content for Free Press and Web

This paper focuses on the needs of free-press editorial companies in terms of tools and supporting activities needed for developing their business in both classical paper world and more recently on the web considering also Web 2.0 technologies. In this paper the preliminary results of a project partially founded by MUR (Italian Ministry of University and Research) are presented in both terms of tools created and to be created together with architectural details, detailing the adoption of MPEG-21[2][8] DIDL for modeling format to be exported into the business-to-business environment.

Watermarking music sheets, it is possible?

Most of the commonly used applications of watermark are referred to color or gray levels pictorial images but some new fields starts to be considered. Some research was recently done for music sheet protection considering it as b/w image [C. Busch et al. (2000)][W. Funk et al., (2001)][M. Schmucker et al. (2001)] or considering it as result of printing from music editors [M. Monsignori et al., (2001)]. We present the theoretical difficulties to implement watermarking approaches for music sheets. It is not intended to demonstrate the technical impossibility of such techniques but only try to show how much effort is needed in order to develop good approaches in this field.