Call for Papers for

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4th Video Search Showcase 2015 (VSS2015)

(previously known as Video Browser Showdown)
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January 4, 2015, held in conjunction with the 21st International MultiMedia Modeling Conference (MMM) in Sydney, Australia

http://www.videobrowsershowdown.org/
http://mmm2015.org/

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VIDEO SEARCH COMPETITION

The Video Search Showcase (VSS) is an annual live video search competition, where international researchers evaluate and demonstrate the efficiency of their interactive video search tools. The Video Search Showcase is a special session at the International Conference on MultiMedia Modeling (MMM), where it started in 2012 under the name “Video Browser Showdown” (VBS). Participating teams first present the details of their systems and then perform several interactive video search tasks in different parts. The last part of the VSS is a moderated session that is open for the public, where participants of the MMM conference can see the interactive tools in action!

VSS2015 will be a half-day workshop that will take place one day before MMM2015 at the conference venue of MMM2015 in Sydney, Australia. Most of the session will consist of a sequence of interactive search tasks without audience. At the end of the workshop, a public session will start with a round of presentations of the participants’ interactive video search tools, followed by a 45 minutes moderated session allowing members of the audience to use the tools. The evaluation of the results will be published in an own paper after the workshop.


TEST PROCEDURE

In VSS2015 we will use two different search categories:
- Visual KIS (Known-Item Search) in a video archive: the moderator presents a short video clip, randomly selected from a common collection of ten videos, which has to be found within 3 minutes.
- Descriptive KIS in a video archive: the moderator presents a textual description about a specific segment, randomly selected from a common collection of ten videos, which has to be found within 3 minutes.

Each search category will consist of several Known Item Search (KIS) tasks that should be solved as fast as possible by interactive search.


INTERACTIVE SEARCH

The videos to be used for the Video Browser Showdown will be provided about 2 month before the event (beginning of November), without any metadata. However, participants are allowed to perform content analysis that supports interactive browsing in the video (e.g., through novel content visualization, content clustering, advanced seeker-bars, or other type of content navigation and interactive querying – e.g., query-by-sketch etc.). The search process must be interactive, i.e., no text-queries are allowed.
Example tools can be found here:
http://www.videobrowsershowdown.org/example-browsers/


DATA SET AND SEARCH TASKS

The data set will consist of about 100 hours of video content of various BBC programming (a subset of the MediaEval 2013 Search & Hyperlinking data set). These video files will have the following characteristics: .webm file format, VP8 video codec, Ogg Vorbis audio codec, standard-definition resolution at 25 fps. The KIS search tasks will be presented on-site. The goal of each KIS task is to find a preselected segment of interest (typically with a duration of 20 seconds) within a specified time limit by interactive search. The segment of interest doesn’t necessarily start and stop at shot boundaries.


VSS SERVER AND TESTING

The Video Search Showcase uses an own server application to evaluate found segments for correctness. Therefore, all participants will be connected to the server via a dedicated WiFi network and need to submit found segments to the server via a simple HTTP-like protocol. The server is connected to a beamer and presents the current score of all teams in a live manner.
The server application as well as example tasks from the previous years can be downloaded here:
http://www.videobrowsershowdown.org/vbs-server/


PARTICIPATION

Anyone with a video browsing tool that allows for interactive browsing, exploration, or navigation in a single video file or in video archives may participate. However, search shouldn’t be based on automatic queries. Examples of tools of interest are: a video shot browser (e.g., temporal-based or concept-based), a video player with extended navigation/interaction means, a video content exploration tool, or tools using advanced visualizations for improved navigation/interaction (video surrogates), etc. Tools developed for interactive video search on mobile devices are of special interest. Moreover, also tools with collaborative interactive search (e.g., with two users) are allowed.


SUBMISSION

To apply for participation please submit a scientific extended demo paper (4-6 pages in Springer LNCS format) via the MMM2015 submission system at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mmm2015-showcase (Video Search Showcase / Video Browser Showdown) until September 22, 2014. The submission should include a detailed description of the video browsing tool and how it supports interactive search in video. Submissions will be peer-reviewed to ensure maximum quality. Accepted submissions will be published in the conference proceedings of MMM 2015.


IMPORTANT DATES

Demo paper submission deadline: September 22, 2014
Notification of acceptance: October 6, 2014
Camera-ready paper due: October 17, 2014
Author registration deadline: October 17, 2014