The main goal of My eDirector 2012, is to research and develop a unique interactive broadcasting service enabling end-users to select focal actors and points of interest within real-time broadcasted scenes. The service will resemble an automated ambient intelligent director that will operate with minimal or even without human intervention. Contrary to state-of-the art services of similar nature that focus on few targets and low-level activity scenes (e.g., the Automated Coverage (BBC 2006) and PolyOmaton projects (AIT 2007) developed by the My eDirector 2012 partners), My eDirector 2012 will target large scale multi-actor, multi-target environments and high-activity scenes. Hence, the proposed ambient intelligent director service will provide new forms of end-user experience, while also enabling deployment of novel revenue-generating services for broadcasters and content providers.

From a research and technological perspective the key innovative features of the My eDirector 2012 broadcasting service are:

• Research and development of novel technologies for identifying and tracking “targets” and scenes of interest.
• Research and development of mechanisms for mapping the low-level semantics (derived from live information acquisition) to high-level semantics defining rules for user-driven selection of cameras and tailored streaming.
• Advanced personalization mechanisms that hinge on the specification of preferences and profiles associated with My eDirector 2012 broadcasting options. My eDirector 2012 will research advanced knowledge representation and learning mechanisms for instantiating and evolving these profiles.
• Development and deployment of broadcasting services enabling delivery of personalized streams over a variety of channels and networking infrastructures, including mobile networks.

While the project will carry out innovative research in all the above areas, its research question concerns the feasibility and potential of the My eDirector 2012 technologies for large scale deployment of user-directed streaming services in realistic multi-camera environments. My eDirector 2012 will concentrate on athletic events for demonstrating and evaluating its technologies and services. Large Scale Broadcasting events (such as coverage of Olympic games) provide a first class forum for demonstrating the My eDirector 2012 novel broadcasting case, given that they offer a large scale multi-venue, multi-event heterogeneous environment with many actors and high-activity scenes. The consortium will organize trials in both controlled laboratory-based environments, as well as field trials. As an ultimate target, My eDirector 2012 endeavours to provide a unique technology showcase for the coming 2012 Olympic Games in the City of London. Such a showcase will be realized based on the “Olympic” partners of the consortium, namely ATOS Origin (the official IT provider of the 2012 Olympics) and BBC (the Olympic rights holders for the UK).