Teresa Chambel

Active video watching using annotation

nmc@di.fct.unl.pt This paper describes the principles and a model for adding content and structure to existing video materials, based on annotation. Annotations in printed media promote active reading and, in a similar way, annotations in video promote active watching. The principles and model are illustrated by a prototype system for video annotation and browsing, named AntV (Annotations in Video).

Hypervideo design and support for contextualized learning

The aim of this paper is to discuss how new video based technologies, such as hypervideo, can provide authentic contexts to support meaningful learning. We approach the issue from both cognitive-psychological and technological perspectives. First, we discuss how cognitive and socio-cognitive processes generally involved in learning and collaborative knowledge building relate to the specific characteristics of hyperlinked videos, informing their design. Then, with regard to technology, we introduce two concepts, which provide tools for crafting and interacting with non-linear knowledge structures based on dynamic video information. Case studies and first research findings are presented and prospects for future research are outlined.

Get around 360° hypervideo

In traditional video, the user is locked to the angle where the camera was pointing to during the capture of the video. With 360° video recording, there are no longer these boundaries, and 360° video capturing devices are becoming more common and affordable to the general public. Hypervideo stretches boundaries even further, allowing to explore the video and to navigate to related information. In this paper, we describe an approach to the design and development of an immersive and interactive interface for the visualization and navigation of 360° hypervideos over the internet. Such videos allow users to pan around to view the contents in different angles and effectively access related information through the hyperlinks. Challenges for presenting this type of hypervideo include: providing users with an appropriate interface capable to explore 360° contents, where the video should change perspective so that the users actually get the feeling of looking around; and providing the appropriate affordances to understand the hypervideo structure and to navigate it effectively in a 360° hypervideo space, even when link opportunities arise in places outside the current viewport.

Design and evaluation of a hypervideo environment to support veterinary surgery learning

In the search of alternative ways to learning veterinary surgery with live animals, hypervideo was considered a promising candidate as a learning tool. Video can enhance the realism and authenticity of a learning environment. By adding structure and interactivity to video, hypervideo allows to navigate video and to explore other related media to complement it. Hypervideo might then support the creation of a rich and realistic learning environment, through the interactive access, construction and communication of knowledge on veterinary surgery. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of Hvet, a hypervideo environment to support learning of veterinary surgery. Design was based on cognitive and media theories, and evaluation was based on the use of Hvet by veterinary students, in order to test its efficacy in substitution of learning and training with live animals. Results support the hypothesis, showing the potential of hypervideo as a valuable and effective tool to support learning of surgery techniques and revealing the most appreciated design options.

Ifelt: accessing movies through our emotions

Films are by excellence the form of art that exploits our affective, perceptual and intellectual activity. Technological developments and the trends for media convergence are turning video into a dominant and pervasive medium and online video is becoming a growing entertainment activity on the web and iTV. The improvement of new techniques for gathering emotional information about videos, both through content analysis or user implicit feedback through user physiological signals, is revealing an unfolding of new ways for exploring emotional information in videos, films or TV series, and brings out new perspectives to personalize user information. We present iFelt - an interactive web video application to classify, access, explore and visualize movies based on their emotional characteristics. In this work, we explore the design and evaluate different ways to access, browse and visualize movies and their contents.

Hypervideo on the web: models and techniques for video integration

Abstract Hypermedia has proven to be a powerful way to structure and interact with multimedia information. In existing hypermedia frameworks, and particularly on the Web, different media types can be integrated in the same hyper document. Given its unique characteristics, true integration of video requires the definition of a more powerful model, denning the semantic of linking videos and other media, and taking into account its spatial and temporal properties. This paper presents the issues involved with providing hypervideo support on the Web. It reviews related work to derive the requirements for such support. These inform the definition of a hypervideo model, based on the Web hypermedia model, capturing video-specific characteristics. In particular, navigation concepts need to be revised in this richer and more complex context. The notion of link awareness is introduced, and several types denned, to help navigation in hypervideo. To support this model, extensions were made to HTML and tools were developed as extensions to existing Web tools, thus maintaining compatibility with existing documents and Web browsers. Some examples are shown to illustrate its functionality. The system is being used and validated in a project, on interactive multimedia for open and distance learning, where video plays a central role.

Technology and Digital Art: Creating video art with evolutionary algorithms

The boundaries of art are subjective, but the impetus for art is often associated with creativity, regarded with wonder and admiration along human history. Most interesting activities and their products are a result of creativity. The main goal of our approach is to explore new creative ways of editing and producing videos, using evolutionary algorithms. A creative evolutionary system makes use of evolutionary computation operators and properties and is designed to aid our own creative processes, and to generate results to problems that traditionally required creative people to solve. Our system is able to generate new videos or to help a user in doing so. New video sequences are combined and selected, based on their characteristics represented as video annotations, either by defining criteria or by interactively performing selections in the evolving population of video clips, in forms that can reflect editing styles. With evolving video, the clips can be explored through emergent narratives and aesthetics in ways that may reveal or inspire creativity in digital art.

Accessing movies based on emotional impact

Emotions play a central role in our daily lives, influencing the way we think and act, our health and sense of well-being, and films are by excellence the form of art that exploits our affective, perceptual and intellectual activity, holding the potential for a significant impact. Video is becoming a dominant and pervasive medium, and online video a growing entertainment activity on the web and iTV, mainly due to technological developments and the trends for media convergence. In addition, the improvement of new techniques for gathering emotional information about videos, both through content analysis or user implicit feedback through user physiological signals complemented in manual labeling from users, is revealing new ways for exploring emotional information in videos, films or TV series, and brings out new perspectives to enrich and personalize video access. In this work, we reflect on the power that emotions have in our lives, on the emotional impact of movies, and on how to address this emotional dimension in the way we classify and access movies, by exploring and evaluating the design of iFelt in its different ways to classify, access, browse and visualize movies based on their emotional impact.

VIRUS: video information retrieval using subtitles

Video is a very rich medium that is becoming increasingly dominant. A massive amount of video information is available, but very difficult to access if not adequately indexed: a challenging task to accomplish. We describe a Video Information Retrieval system, under development, that operates on a database composed of subtitled documents. The simultaneous analysis of video, subtitles and audio streams is performed in order to index, visualize and retrieve excerpts of video documents that share a certain emotional or semantic property.

Immersive 360° mobile video with an emotional perspective

By appealing to several senses and conveying very rich information, video has the potential for a strong emotional impact on viewers, their sense of presence and engagement. These capacities may be extended even further with multimedia sensing and the flexibility of mobility. Mobile devices are commonly used and increasingly incorporating a wide range of sensors and actuators with the potential to capture and display 360° and HD video and metadata and to support more powerful and immersive video user experien-ces. In this paper, we explore the immersion potential of mobile video augmented with visual, auditory and tactile perceptual sensing with an emotional perspective on the impact on users. Results confirmed advantages in using a multisensory approach to increase immersion and user satisfaction, and identified properties and parameters that worked better in different conditions.