Canada's National Aviation Museum
Problem: Effectively showcase world-renowned aviation collection in
limited space.
Solution: Interactive, electronic encyclopedia made accessible with
StarWorks digital video networking
software.
Benefit: Makes high-impact museum resources available to the public
at a low cost.
Canada's National Aviation Museum was recently faced with a daunting task
- how to effectively showcase its world-renowned aviation collection with
very little floor space. The solution? Create an interactive, electronic
encyclopedia that could be accessed from within the museum's doors and
beyond. The museum chose to build several multimedia-based kiosks
incorporating digital video, audio, and animation that could be accessed
across the museum's network, selecting Starlight Networks' StarWorks(r)
digital video networking software as the heart of the solution.
"We are a national museum, and by law are required to educate the public
on the subject of aviation," says Victoria Dickenson, director of public
programs at the National Aviation Museum. "We currently have 47 aircraft
on the museum floor, and an additional 71 in storage, or on loan. Given
our space restriction, we needed a way to allow people to really examine
the aircraft and to become knowledgeable about them," she continues.
"We decided the best solution would be to create a world-class electronic
multimedia encyclopedia, including digital video, audio, and animation,"
explains Dickenson. "We felt the encyclopedia must be interactive,
tailored to each viewer's unique interests, and accessible simultaneously
by multiple users in both English and French. We knew that using
interactive multimedia at several point-of-information kiosks would
provide users with a much richer understanding than that possible with
presentations of purely textual information."
This meant that digital video had to be distributed across a network to
several stations simultaneously. According to Dickenson, "The biggest
benefit of Starlight Networks' StarWorks software is its ability to
transmit multimedia, making the considerable resources of the Museum
available to a huge audience at a reasonable cost."
Digital video for networked multimedia
Randy Sullivan, multimedia portfolio manager at the Stentor Resource
Center (Stentor is an alliance of Canada's major telephone companies),
explains why networked multimedia - including digital video - using
Starlight Networks was chosen over other alternative technologies for the
application. "The Museum wanted the information to have a reaching impact
on the audience. Digital video was a much more sensory and emotional way
of providing the information."
In addition, the Aviation Museum wanted MPEG 1 quality digital video over
a communications line with online access to the database, and digital
video with Starlight's StarWorks was the best available solution. "We were
tasked with showing decades-old films, in some cases created in the 20s
and 30s," explains Sullivan. "After digitizing the video, the quality of
the old films was preserved to the pleasure of both the museum and its
patrons."
Why Starlight Networks' StarWorks
Although several different multimedia delivery alternatives were
considered, including CD-ROM and laser disc technologies, "providing
LAN-based multimedia with digital video using StarWorks was the best
solution," says Sullivan. Using CD-ROM would have made updating Museum
kiosk information costly, because updating information would mean cutting
new CDs each time the aviation collection expanded. Budgets were tight, so
selecting the lower-cost solution was important."
About the Silver Dart project
The resulting award-winning electronic encyclopedia, known as the Silver
Dart Project, came about through the collaboration of a consortium of
companies. The Silver Dart Project is now widely recognized as one of the
finest works of interactive multimedia, and has been awarded a silver
medal in the NewMedia INVISION competition. The Museum display is based on
StarWorks software, permitting realtime access by numerous users to the
extensive digital video database. Two Intel 486/66 MHz kiosks are served
by a single StarWorks-12M video server distributing MPEG-based (Motion
Picture Experts Group) digital video and audio clips and Kodak PhotoCD
images over an Ethernet local area network (LAN) star configuration. The
developer designed the easy-to-use, touch-screen graphical user interface
using Icon Author, produced the multimedia presentation, and provided
systems integration, network planning, and database design services.
Starlight's StarWorks provides access to multiple users, manages the
storage and transmission of data, and guarantees the delivery of
synchronized sound, motion digital video, and animation, in addition to
text and graphics.
Expanding the museum's reach with networked multimedia
The two workstations at the Museum have been serving visitors for several
months now. Phase two of the project is now underway, with the goal of
providing access to the Silver Dart Project to local schools and visitor
bureaus. What makes the Silver Dart Project unique is that the Stentor
companies are developing technologies to give users access to multimedia
programs through telecommunications networks, without resorting to
standalone delivery systems, such as CD-ROM or CDI. The complete
encyclopedia is now on a kiosk at an Ottawa high school. Content is placed
on the server and updated remotely via an ISDN connection.
"Most museums have large collections that are more or less inaccessible to
people outside the museum. The kind of multimedia encyclopedia available
to anyone with a modem will go a long way toward opening up our collection
to scholars, students, and enthusiasts," says Christopher Terry, director
general of the National Aviation Museum.
Terry believes that the Silver Dart Project is an important first step in
the direction of full interactive public access. Museums, galleries, and
other information providers are searching for ways to get their
collections out to the public, and networked digital multimedia systems
lay the groundwork for the interactive public networks of the future.
Additional plans for the encyclopedia include a kiosk at the National
Capital Commission Visitor Centre, as well as the Ontario Science Centre.
The Ontario Science Centre kiosk will be truly unique, since the plan is
to set up an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) connection through
fiberoptics from Toronto, back to the database at the National Aviation
Museum in Ottawa. This will be among the first examples of online access
using an ATM network to the content source. The new installations will use
StarWorks as a key enabling technology in bringing the story of aviation
to people throughout North America.
Environment at a glance
Hardware: Intel Xpress LX 486/DX2 66 MHz EISA video server with 2
GB of storage; two Intel Classic-R 486/66 MHz clients at kiosks; Sigma
Designs RealMagic MPEG digital video compression card; and Kodak Photo CD
image storage.
Network environment: Ethernet LAN and ISDN WAN.
Software: StarWorks-12M digital video networking software from
Starlight Networks.
Video compression format: MPEG video.
Authoring tool: Icon Author.
StarWorks is a registered trademark of Starlight Networks, Inc.
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