A report on a study by the Technical University of Vienna and the Austrian Film Museum of content analysis (automatic indexing supporting search and retrieval) of archive film. The approach is not ground-breaking when applied to video content, but in this study they were specifically concerned with archived film. Therefore there were the additional problems of digitisation of archived film, plus coping with the issues of damage and deterioration in ways that are unique to film and have not been addressed in studies of video content.
The specific goal of the project was to analyse the highly formalised style of filmmaking of the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov (1896-1954). However the discussion in the paper, and the methodology of the overall project, have value to anyone attempting computer-based analysis of archived film — and even video.