This short example represents how the interactive DVD was to work. The principle is very simple. When you read a text and come across a footnote, you may find the annotation at the bottom of the page, at the end of the article or book, or at the end of a chapter. On the DVD, as you watch the performance, when called for a small red button appears. Clicking on the button stops the performance and brings up the annotation. Closing the annotation window resumes the performance. This process allows performances of all kinds, be they videos or films, to be annotated just as written texts are, thus providing invaluable and unique scholarly resources.
We were not able to carry the project to completion, annotating the full performances, because of the greed of the publishers from which the annotations would be drawn. They simply demanded ridiculous sums for the rights to use them, in some cases even after the authors of the annotation material gave us their permission. Pity.
The embedded DVD sample is from Waiting for Godot, and does not include the annotation example which appears on the English-language clip above. The original project intention was to annotate the full performances on DVD.