Project Showcase

DNA Interactive - 50 Years of DNA Science

Project Brief
To enable students and academics to search and to watch on their computers over 150 hours of detailed interviews with world-renowned DNA scientists including Jim Watson, Linus Pauling, Sydney Brenner, Mario Capechi, Tom Cech, Fred Sanger and Craig Venter.
 
Execution
The DNAi video archive site was produced using the Doovle channel creation platform. It also uses Doovle's soundtrack search technology which makes it possible for users to search for words and phrases that occur in any of the video interviews and to watch matched scenes immediately.

 
Background
The DNA Interactive project is dedicated to the moment on February 28, 1953, when Jim Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double-helical structure of DNA and to the scientists who breathed life into that structure. Over 60 leading scientists, including 11 Nobel Laureates, were interviewed for their viewpoints on how we came to understand the language of DNA, how we bend it to our own service, and what it can tell us about who we are.
 
The first version of DNA Interactive was released on DVD (Windfall Digital) and contained only three hours of footage from the circa 300 hours of video interviews recorded. When the Howard Hughes Medical Institute wanted to make available the complete edited set of 63 individual scientists' interviews available to watch and search online, they came to Doovle.
 
Technical
All the original video interviews were shot in HD and edited down to circa 150 hours of final footage with each DNA scientist speaking about their work for over two hours.
 
Quicktime streaming server was selected and all final streamable video was encoded in H.264 hinted .MOV with video bitrate of 512kbps and a widescreen dimension of 512x288 pixels. This smaller video window fomat was chosen to give very sharp picture quality and, because almost all the footage is talking heads, there was no requirement for full-screen display.
 
All the video interviews are fully searchable but there were no professional subtitles or captions available. The search index was built from the original transcripts that were made of each interview to assist the editing process. Each transcript was split into 60 second segments and each segment synchronised to its correct timpoint.
 
Credits
DNA Interactive was commissioned and produced by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories to commemorate the 50 years of the discovery of the strcture of DNA. Filming and video production was by Windfall Films and Windfall Digital. Molecular animations were produced by Drew Berry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. Internet TV production and programming was by Doovle.