Interactive and seamless access to video content is facilitated by technology that is able to annotate and retrieve media data efficiently and automatically with the minimal human interventions. Media should be accessible by intended users quickly and independent of the database size, regardless of the homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the delivery channels or the user computing platform. These requirements are driving research and development efforts in the European project BUSMAN; in which a system for efficient annotation, seamless delivery of and access to video components across heterogeneous channels is being developed. The BUSMAN system architecture is based on the needs and expectations of two types of users: content providers and end users. In this paper an overview of the BUSMAN system is presented and its main functionalities are described.