IBM Multimedia Analysis and Retrieval System

Hardware Requirements:

The IMARS extraction tool provides a Windows-based graphical user interface and requires Windows (XP, 2003, Vista). A command-line version is available for Linux. Please contact us for more details.

The IMARS search tool operates along with a Web server using common gateway interface (CGI) to run the IMARS search program. The IMARS search tool also requires Windows (XP, 2003, Vista) for the server machine. A Linux version is also available. The client machine can be any computer that has a Web browser and does not require specific operating system. Overall, the following hardware is required:

• Operating System (OS): Windows (XP, 2003, Vista); please contact for Linux.
• Disk drive space: 10MB for IMARS tools and up to 10GB for pre-built packaged classifiers; additional drive space is required for storing results of processing image and video collections, which depends on the size of the collections.
• RAM: >512MB
• CPU: >Pentium IV, 2.4GHZ

Software Requirements:

In order to fully operate the IMARS search tool, the following software is required to be installed on the server and/or client machines:

• Server: HTTP Web Server - If a HTTP Web Server is already installed on the server machine, it will need to be configured to support the IMARS search tool (instructions provided in following sections). If a HTTP Web Server is not installed, then one must be installed, such as Apache (see http://httpd.apache.org/) and configured for IMARS prior to using the IMARS search tool. Instructions for installing and configuring the IMARS search tool for Apache are provided in the Section HTTP Server Setup on page 12 of the IMARS guide.
• Client: Any Web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) is required to be able to use the IMARS search tool to access the extraction results for an image and video collection NOTE: the server and client can be installed on the same machine or on different ones, according to the needs of the user.

Optional Software:

By default, IMARS supports a wide range of digital image formats (such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF and PNM). Optionally, IMARS can be extended to operate on wide set of video formats using the FFmpeg decoder (see http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/). Please refer to Section “Optional Software Installation” on page 12 of the IMARS guide.

1. Setup HTTP server
   
   1. Install Apache Web Server (http://httpd.apache.org/) into a directory of your choice (hereafter referred to as [APACHEROOT]; on Windows PCs, it is usually C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation.
   2. Configure the http.conf file in the [APACHEROOT]/Apache2.2/conf/ directory as described in the IMARS User Guide (PDF).
   3. Restart the Apache server.

2. Download the imars.zip (~8.6MB unzipped) file and unzip the file to a directory of your choice i.e. C:\Program Files\Imars\ (hereafter referred to as <DIR>).
3. Download the classifiers.zip (~6MB unzipped) and unzip the file to <DIR>bin
4. Navigate to <DIR>/bin/.
5. Read the license agreement in the /license subfolder.
6. Run Imars.exe (Extraction Tool) in <DIR>/bin folder
7. Specify the input search directory and the results directory (in synch with http.conf settings).
8. Set Options, Images, Video, Metadata, Classifiers, Clusters, and Features tab in the Extraction Tool or use default values.
9. Press START button. After cataloging is finished, link to the collection will pop up in your default Web browser (or can be accessed through http://localhost/imars)

Please see the IMARS User Guide (PDF) for further information.