What is VARS?
The Video Annotation and Reference System (VARS) is a software interface and database system that provides tools for describing, cataloging, retrieving, and viewing the visual, descriptive, and quantitative data associated with video. Developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) for annotating deep-sea video data, VARS is currently being used to describe over 3000 dives by our remotely operated vehicles (ROV). VARS has allowed MBARI scientists to produce numerous quanititative and qualitative scientific publications based on video data.
VARS is a suite of 3 applications: Annotation, Knowledgebase, and Query. All three applications are written in Java and have been tested on Windows PCs and Macs. VARS can be used to annotate video from either VCRs that support RS422 control or movie files, such as QuickTime and AVI movies.
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News
2008-02-20 - VARS 4.3-SNAPSHOT-2 was released. You can download the latest release here. This is a beta release including a number of bug fixes and improvements.
2007-10-24 - VARS 4.3-SNAPSHOT was released. You can download the latest release here. This is a beta release including a number of bug fixes and improvements. The most notable change is better support for annotating video files. Special thanks to CSIRO for their support and help with this release.
2007-10-15 - The MBARIX4J project was created. This project contains Java extensions used by the VARS project..
2007-08-15 - VARS 4.2 was released. You can download the latest release here.
2007-08-07 - VCR4J 1.4 was released. This is the Java API used for controlling VCR's. You can download the latest release here.
2007-04-27 - The QTX4J project was created. This project contains QuickTime for Java extensions used by the VARS project..