Automatic TV program production with APEs

Although TV programs are an easy way to convey messages, thoughts or images to other people, program production is still difficult for individuals. We have been studying TV program Making Language (TVML) to enable individuals to create their own TV programs. TVML is a language to describe TV programs and the TVML Player interprets the TVML script and creates the TV program in real time. To simplify program production for the user, we are now studying a technique for producing TV programs automatically. Using this technique, a user can make a TV program merely by inputting key information into an automatic production module, which is named APE (automatic production engine). APE is a very simple unit that processes given text data and also outputs text data. APE converts XML input text into TVML to create a TV program. The user can create various types of TV programs on a PC by simply downloading favorite APEs and providing some input to the APE.