AVCloud: Audiovisual Use Cases for the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage

Audiovisual heritage offers a wealth of knowledge about our society, yet it is often difficult to access due to technical and legal obstacles. The AVCloud project (Audiovisual Use Cases for ECCCH) aims to develop guidelines and open digital tools that integrate seamlessly with the emerging European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).

Despite ongoing efforts to digitise cultural heritage collections, managing and sharing audio and video materials still poses major challenges: ranging from description and metadata issues, to unclear copyright status and a lack of tailored digital tools. This makes a large share of these materials practically inaccessible to the wider public. As the AVCloud consortium, we aim to provide solutions that will allow researchers and individual users (including creators) to access European audiovisual heritage, while supporting the European Commission and the cultural sector in building an open digital infrastructure.

The project will result in:

• Practical use case scenarios built on comprehensive testing of large datasets across diverse contexts – from archivists’ daily workflows, through film studies and education, to documentary production.
• Open-source digital tools supporting automatic transcription, soundtrack translation, geolocation and automated frame analysis with risk-conscious, responsible use of AI.
• Metadata standards and multilingual Linked Open Data vocabularies that connect recordings with contextual texts, photographs, and 3D models.
• Recommendations and policy guidelines for the European Commission and the cultural sector on the ethical use of AI, intellectual property/copyright management, and the growth of a sustainable, open digital infrastructure.

Funded under the Horizon Europe program, the project brings together 9 partners from 5 countries, including film archives, universities, and technology specialists:

• Ludwig Boltzmann Society (Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft – Österreichische Vereinigung zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung / Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History) – project coordinator,
• DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum,
• Austrian Film Museum (Österreichisches Filmmuseum Verein),
• Cinecittà Società Per Azioni,
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
• Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf),
• TU Wien (Technische Universität Wien),
• max.recall information system gmbh,
• and us – Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation.

AVCloud is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe Grant Agreement No. 101288373.

Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.