Video archive to boost nuke training

An Energy Department laboratory aims to improve its nuclear disaster training

with the help of an advanced video search and retrieval tool.

Sandia National Laboratories announced today that it has selected Excalibur

Technologies Corp. to provide a video content management solution for the

Broken Arrow program. "Broken Arrow" is the term used to report an accident

involving a nuclear weapon, warhead or other nuclear component.

DOE's Accident Response Group routinely participates in Broken Arrow

training exercises and records on video how teams with varying talents and

tools disarm mock nuclear devices. ARG keeps a collection of the video footage,

but it is accessible only from one station, and a whole video must be viewed

to get to a particular section that someone may be interested in.

To solve that problem, Sandia will use Excalibur Screening Room to maintain

the ARG training archive, said Mike Krawczyk, software engineer for Sandia

ARG.

Screening Room provides video capture and analysis, intelligent indexing,

acceleration of the video production process and instant publishing of video

content to the Internet. The system's Capture Client feature lets users

archive and search video collections and capture analog or digital video,

including live feeds, for immediate access.

"This allows them to crop out only the segments that are needed for

things like PowerPoint presentations," Krawczyk said. "It's also available

on the Web as opposed to just one station, so it becomes an enterprise Web

application."

The Excalibur solution cost Sandia about $75,000, and the system will

be operational by Dec. 9, Krawczyk said.