The Third International Video Browser Showdown Competition (VBS2014)

Call for Papers for
The Third International Video Browser Showdown Competition (VBS2014)

January 7, 2014, held in conjunction with the 20th International
MultiMedia Modeling Conference (MMM) in Dublin, Ireland

http://www.videobrowsershowdown.org/


The VBS2014 will be a half-day workshop that will take place one day
before MMM2014 at the conference venue of MMM2014 in Dublin, Ireland. Only
the last 45 minutes will be public to the audience and act as a live and
moderated "special demo session" of MMM2014 right before the Welcome
Reception. This new schedule will allow a much more detailed analysis of
the search performance of participating teams as well as different kinds
of search tasks. The evaluation of the results will be published in an own
paper after the workshop.

Test Procedure

In VBS2014 we will use four different search categories:
- Visual KIS in a single video: the moderator presents a short video clip,
randomly selected from a common video file, which has to be found within 3
minutes (the video file will be mentioned).
- Descriptive KIS in a single video: the moderator presents a textual
description about a specific segment, randomly selected from a common
video file, which has to be found within 3 minutes (the video file will be
mentioned).
- Visual KIS 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 6 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 6 minutes.

Each search category will consist of several Known Item Search (KIS) tasks
that should be solved as fast as possible by interactive search. A
participant may register for only one or even for all four search
categories.

Interactive Search

The videos to be used for the Video Browser Showdown will be provided
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, or advanced seeker-bars
etc.). The search process must be interactive, i.e., no text-queries are
allowed.

Data Set and Search Tasks

The data set will consist of about 30 video files (average duration of 1
hour) and will be made available to accepted participants several weeks
before the competition. These video files will have the following
characteristics: .mp4 file format, MPEG-4 video codec (H.264/AVC), AAC-LC
audio codec, standard-definition resolution. 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.

VBS Server

The Video Browser Showdown 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.

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 demo paper (2-3
pages in Springer LNCS format) via the MMM2014 submission system at
https://www.conftool.com/mmm2014/ (VBS track) until September 16, 2013.
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 2014.

Important Dates

Demo paper submission deadline: September 16, 2013
Notification of acceptance: September 30, 2013
Camera-ready paper due: October 16, 2013
Author registration deadline: October 16, 2013