Understanding Online Audio-Visual Content: A European Initiative, Media Literacy and the User

Recent debates about media literacy and the internet have begun to acknowledge the importance of active user-engagement and interaction. It is not enough simply to access material online, but also to comment upon it and re-use. Yet how do these new user expectations fit within digital initiatives which increase access to audio-visual-content but which prioritise access and preservation of archives and online research rather than active user-engagement? This article will address these issues of media literacy in relation to audio-visual content. It will consider how these issues are currently being addressed, focusing particularly on the high-profile European initiative EUscreen. EUscreen brings together 20 European television archives into a single searchable database of over 40,000 digital items. Yet creative re-use restrictions and copyright issues prevent users from re-working the material they find on the site. Instead of re-use, EUscreen instead offers access and detailed contextualisation of its collection of material. But if the emphasis for resources within an online environment rests no longer upon access but on user-engagement, what does EUscreen and similar sites offer to different users?

Robust Audio-Visual Speech Recognition under Noisy Audio-Video Conditions

This paper presents the maximum weighted stream posterior (MWSP) model as a robust and efficient stream integration method for audio-visual speech recognition in environments, where the audio or video streams may be subjected to unknown and time-varying corruption. A significant advantage of MWSP is that it does not require any specific measurements of the signal in either stream to calculate appropriate stream weights during recognition, and as such it is modality-independent. This also means that MWSP complements and can be used alongside many of the other approaches that have been proposed in the literature for this problem. For evaluation we used the large XM2VTS database for speaker-independent audio-visual speech recognition. The extensive tests include both clean and corrupted utterances with corruption added in either/both the video and audio streams using a variety of types (e.g., MPEG-4 video compression) and levels of noise. The experiments show that this approach gives excellent performance in comparison to another well-known dynamic stream weighting approach and also compared to any fixed-weighted integration approach in both clean conditions or when noise is added to either stream. Furthermore, our experiments show that the MWSP approach dynamically selects suitable integration weights on a frame-by-frame basis according to the level of noise in the streams and also according to the naturally fluctuating relative reliability of the modalities even in clean conditions. The MWSP approach is shown to maintain robust recognition performance in all tested conditions, while requiring no prior knowledge about the type or level of noise.

From Frank Miller to Zack Snyder, and Return: Contemporary Superhero Comics and Post-Classical Hollywood

Film adaptations of superhero comic-books offer a particularly rich case study to analyse narrative strategies of contemporary Hollywood cinema. The serial structures adopted by the comics they are based on, as well as their use of the spectacular potential of the image, provide a successful model for current audiovisual productions. Without completely abandoning classical techniques, these adaptations try to find a new balance between narrative and digital phantasmagoria. This paper discusses some significant examples of this genre, including adaptations of classical DC and Marvel franchises and more recent series, as well as other comic-book influenced films such as The Matrix and Unbreakable.

An Event Driven Fusion Approach for Enjoyment Recognition in Real-time

Social signals and interpretation of carried information is of high importance in Human Computer Interaction. Often used for affect recognition, the cues within these signals are displayed in various modalities. Fusion of multi-modal signals is a natural and interesting way to improve automatic classification of emotions transported in social signals. Throughout most present studies, uni-modal affect recognition as well as multi-modal fusion, decisions are forced for fixed annotation segments across all modalities. In this paper, we investigate the less prevalent approach of event driven fusion, which indirectly accumulates asynchronous events in all modalities for final predictions. We present a fusion approach, handling short-timed events in a vector space, which is of special interest for real-time applications. We compare results of segmentation based uni-modal classification and fusion schemes to the event driven fusion approach. The evaluation is carried out via detection of enjoyment-episodes within the audiovisual Belfast Story-Telling Corpus.

Evaluation of Video Presentation to Deliver Surgical Anatomy Teaching

Title Evaluation of Video Presentation to Deliver Surgical Anatomy Teaching

Authors Walsh I.K., Boohan M., Dorman A.

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy of newly introduced video presentation to deliver Surgical Anatomy teaching to undergraduate medical students.

Design and Setting Qualitative and quantitative study using questionnaires and focus groups, employing students undertaking the perioperative medicine module of the phase 4 undergraduate medical curriculum at Queen’s University Belfast.

Outcome Measures To determine:
(1) if video presentation is effective in delivering surgical anatomy teaching,
(2) student’s learning preferences regarding this teaching method.
Results The questionnaire response rate was 89% (216 of 244 students; female: male ratio 1.25) and 42 students participated in 6 focus groups. Mean questionnaire responses indicated a favourable opinion on quality assurance items, with a mixed response to video presentation as a learning method. 71% of students preferred to receive a lecture in person, rather than via video presentation. There were no statistically significant differences between genders regarding learning preferences in general and regarding video versus live presentation in particular. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that favourable responses to video presentation were strongly associated with perceived audiovisual quality and learning preferences (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 0.77), with 72% of students considering video presentation worthwhile. Positive perception of overall quality was strongly associated with learning preferences as well as more generic quality assurance issues (80% students; alpha coefficient 0.83).
The results were supported by triangulation of the above quantitative data with qualitative data generated by the focus groups. Students further articulated the view that video presentation may be more appropriate and effective in a mixed method setting.

Reference Basu Roy R, McMahon GT. Video-based cases disrupt deep critical thinking in problem-based learning. Med Educ 2012 Apr;46(4):426-435.

To be inside someone else's dream: On Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds

Music for Sleeping & Waking Minds (2011-2012) is a new,overnight work in which four performers fall asleep while wearing custom designed EEG sensors which monitor their brainwave activity. The data gathered from the EEG sensors is applied in real time to different audio and image signal processing functions, resulting in continuously evolving multichannel sound environment and visual projection. This material serves as an audiovisual description of the individual and collective neuro physiological state of the ensemble. Audiences are invited to experience the work in different states of attention: while alert and asleep, resting and awakening.

Opening eyes to opera: the process of translation for blind and partially-sighted audiences

In today’s rapidly developing digital age and increasingly socially-aware society, the notion of media accessibility is evolving in response to shifting audience expectations. Performing arts and media, such as opera, are called upon to include all audiences, and related audiovisual translation methods are progressing in this direction. These comprise audio description and touch tours for the blind and partially-sighted, two relatively new translation modalities which are consumer-oriented and require an original research design for the analysis of the translation processes involved. This research design follows two fundamental principles: (1) audience reception studies should be an integral part of the investigation into the translation process; and (2) the translation process is regarded as a network. Therefore, this paper explores the unique translation processes of audio description and touch tours within the context of live opera from the perspective of actor-network theory and by providing an overview of a reception project. Through discussion of the methodology and findings, this paper addresses the question of the impact of audience reception on the translation process.

Opening Eyes to Opera: the process of translation for blind and partially-sighted audiences

In today’s rapidly developing digital age and increasingly socially-aware society, the notion of media accessibility is evolving in response to shifting audience expectations. Performing arts and media, such as opera, are called upon to include all audiences, and related audiovisual translation methods are progressing in this direction. These comprise audio description and touch tours for the blind and partially-sighted, two relatively new translation modalities which are consumer-oriented and require an original research design for the analysis of the translation processes involved. This research design follows two fundamental principles: (1) audience reception studies should be an integral part of the investigation into the translation process; and (2) the translation process is regarded as a network. Therefore, this chapter explores the unique translation processes of audio description and touch tours within the context of live opera from the perspective of actor-network theory and by providing an overview of a reception project. Through discussion of the methodology and findings, this chapter addresses the question of the impact of audience reception on the translation process.

Using Audio-visual Presentation to Teach Global Mindedness in Social Work Education

Direct experience of social work in another country is making an increasingly important contribution to internationalising the social work academic curriculum together with the cultural competency of students. However at present this opportunity is still restricted to a limited number of students. The aim of this paper is to describe and reflect on the production of an audio-visual presentation as representing the experience of three students who participated in an exchange with a social work programme in Pune, India. It describes and assesses the rationale, production and use of video to capture student learning from the Belfast/Pune exchange. We also describe the use of the video in a classroom setting with a year group of 53 students from a younger cohort. This exercise aimed to stimulate students’ curiosity about international dimensions of social work and add to their awareness of poverty, social justice, cultural competence and community social work as global issues. Written classroom feedback informs our discussion of the technical as well as the pedagogical benefits and challenges of this approach. We conclude that some benefit of audio-visual presentation in helping students connect with diverse cultural contexts, but that a complementary discussion challenging stereotyped viewpoints and unconscious professional imperialism is also crucial.