As we saw in the previous chapter,¹ the “audiovisual text is not in itself a cognitive resource for an audience. It becomes so only after it has undergone a qualitative transformation”.

In order to become a resource sui generis, it must in principle undergo a set of transformations, indexations, adaptations etc. to enable it to fulfill the expectations of a given audience, in view of specific uses and exploitations, etc.

A first “manipulation”, here, consists of identifying the most relevant “moments” or “passages” to make a “source” audiovisual text (i.e. which has its own identity) correspond to a specific audience, use or exploitation. From a technical point of view, it is a question of “segmenting” a document.

In this chapter, therefore, we shall deal with the first workshop in ASW Studio, called the “Segmentation Workshop”.

This workshop enables the analyst to virtually segment a video, in its entirety or in parts – with the aim of later describing and annotating it using the “Description Workshop”.

After a general presentation of the segmentation issue, which will be followed by a description of the functions of the Segmentation Workshop served by ASW Studio, we will offer a number of reflections on segmentation. Finally, we shall look at this workshop in perspective.