Call for Extended Demo-Papers for the

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5th Video Browser Showdown 2016 (VBS 2016)

(also known as Video Search Showcase / VSS)
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4-6 January, 2016 in Miami, USA

In conjunction with the 22nd International Conference on MultiMedia
Modeling (MMM 2016)

http://www.videobrowsershowdown.org/
http://www.eecs.ucf.edu/mmm2016/



VIDEO SEARCH COMPETITION
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The Video Browser Showdown (VBS) / 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
Browser Showdown is a special session at the International Conference on
MultiMedia Modeling (MMM), where it started in 2012. Participating teams first
present the details of their systems and then perform several interactive
video search tasks with different modalities (visual known-item search tasks
and textual known-item search tasks). The last part of the VBS is a moderated
session that is open for the public, where participants of the MMM conference
can see the interactive tools in action!

VBS 2016 is planned as a half-day workshop at MMM 2016 in Miami, USA. The
major part 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
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VBS 2016 will use two different search categories, both with known-item search
(KIS) tasks:
- Visual KIS in a video archive: the moderator presents a short video clip,
randomly selected from a common collection of about 100-200 hours of video,
which has to be found within 6 minutes.
- Textual KIS in a video archive: the moderator presents a textual description
about a target segment, randomly selected from the video collection, which
has to be found within 6 minutes.

Each search category will consist of about 5-10 tasks that should be solved as
fast as possible.



INTERACTIVE SEARCH
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The videos to be used for the Video Browser Showdown will be provided about
two months before the event (beginning of November), without any metadata.
Participants are allowed to perform any content analysis that supports
interactive search in the video (e.g., through content clustering, advanced
seeker-bars, novel content visualization, or other type of content navigation
and interactive querying – e.g., query-by-sketch etc.). The search process
must be interactive, i.e., pure text-queries are not allowed.
Example tools can be found here:
http://www.videobrowsershowdown.org/example-browsers/



DATA SET AND SEARCH TASKS
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The data set will consist of about 100-200 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 target segment of interest
(typically with a duration of 20 seconds) within a specified time limit by
interactive search (typically 6 minutes). The segment of interest doesn’t
necessarily start and stop at shot boundaries.



VSS SERVER AND TESTING
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The Video Browser Showdown uses an own server application (the VBS Server) 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 projector and presents the current score of all teams in 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 & TARGETED TOOLS
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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 only
(performing pure text queries and browsing of ranked results is not the goal
of the VBS). 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
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To apply for participation please submit a scientific extended demo paper
(4-6 pages in Springer LNCS format) via the MMM 2016 submission system at
https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/MMM2016/ (Video Browser Showdown / Video
Search Showcase) until September 13, 2015. The submission should include a
detailed description of the video browsing tool and discuss 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 2016.



IMPORTANT DATES
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Extended demo paper submission: September 20, 2015 (extended)
Notification of acceptance: September 27, 2015
Camera-ready paper due: October 10, 2015
Author registration deadline: October 10, 2015



Organizers:
Werner Bailer, Joanneum Research, Austria
Cathal Gurrin, Dublin City University, Ireland
Klaus Schoeffmann, Klagenfurt University, Austria