Dr Silvia Pfeiffer has worked on novel media technology for more than 14 years.

Research for the Future

Silvia wrote her PhD thesis on audio content analysis techniques and new media applications for digital video.

At the CSIRO, she developed specifications and software for the Annodex project, creating annotated and indexed open media technology for an open media web.

Annodex is now an independent open source community and association, Australian sister to the US Xiph.Org Foundation. Its ideas have been merged into HTML5, a specification that Silvia now co-authors.

Startup Experience

In 2006 Silvia co-founded an Australian company in online video technology called Vquence. Its focus is now on aggregating quantitative measurements of online video use – Web video analytics. The data set is available to customers through an API.

Creating the Future

The W3C started a Web video initiative in 2007 to make audio and video technology online an integral part of the Web experience. Silvia became involved to contribute her experience from Annodex.

The standards that are developed provide Web users with a more fine-grained and semantic means of interacting with audio and video resources than is currently possible, as well as native support for audio and video playback and conferencing directly in Web browsers.

Silvia is part of the development of the Media Fragment URI specification, is now co-editor of the HTML5 specification, and editor of the WebVTT specification. She is also involved in the development of WebRTC through her work at NICTA.