Extensible detection and indexing of highlight events in broadcasted sports video

Content-based indexing is fundamental to support and sustain the ongoing growth of broadcasted sports video. The main challenge is to design extensible frameworks to detect and index highlight events. This paper presents: 1) A statistical-driven event detection approach that utilizes a minimum amount of manual knowledge and is based on a universal scope-of-detection and audio-visual features; 2) A semi-schema-based indexing that combines the benefits of schema-based modeling to ensure that the video indexes are valid at all time without manual checking, and schema-less modeling to allow several passes of instantiation in which additional elements can be declared. To demonstrate the performance of the events detection, a large dataset of sport videos with a total of around 15 hours including soccer, basketball and Australian football is used.

Gridgrid

A man alone. Cabin fever. Invoking a feeling of isolation and fragmentation.

Dirk de Bruyn: Grid grid 2004 10:00
Dirk de Bruyn was born in Dordrecht and moved with his parents to Australia when he was eight years old. Most of his work deals with the trauma of migration and cultural displacement, expressed in the nature of the medium film itself with the flicker and the after image. Grid Grid is a horizontal layering of footage in combination with drawings, letters and numbers which is typically of Dirk's films. A nervous movement referring to the movements of horizontal interference on a TV screen, in an audio visual play with the fascinating sounds by Dan Armstrong.

The body of Christ : blasphemy as a necessary transgression

This chapter was originally prefaced with an audio-visual presentation showing key scenes from Martin Scorsese’s film, The Last Temptation of Christ, cut to the folk hymn, ‘Go Tell Everyone’, which is reproduced below. The video segued into a short duologue, which dramatised the ambiguity inherent in God’s call. The presentation concluded with the same hymn accompanied by images of the poor, the marginalised and the powerful.

Content-based video indexing for sports applications using integrated multi-modal approach

This thesis presents a research work based on an integrated multi-modal approach for sports video indexing and retrieval. By combining specific features extractable from multiple (audio-visual) modalities, generic structure and specific events can be detected and classified. During browsing and retrieval, users will benefit from the integration of high-level semantic and some descriptive mid-level features such as whistle and close-up view of player(s). The main objective is to contribute to the three major components of sports video indexing systems. The first component is a set of powerful techniques to extract audio-visual features and semantic contents automatically. The main purposes are to reduce manual annotations and to summarize the lengthy contents into a compact, meaningful and more enjoyable presentation. The second component is an expressive and flexible indexing technique that supports gradual index construction. Indexing scheme is essential to determine the methods by which users can access a video database. The third and last component is a query language that can generate dynamic video summaries for smart browsing and support user-oriented retrievals.

Narrativization of actuality : convergence of form and genre in film and television

The thesis concerns the treatment of actuality in film and television, particularly the narrativization of actuality images, and the context of their placement within audio/visual texts. Several instances of the convergence of media form and genre are analyzed, and the conventions of classificatory systems and boundaries that pertain to film and television representations are reconsidered in light of changes in the conventions of genre. The distinction between, and convergence of fictional and non-fictional conventions of narrative are therefore central to the thesis, as are the related issues of viewer response, the nature of subjectivity in the viewer, the connectivity of text and culture, and the relations of actuality to the text. The thesis traces the narrativization of actuality through textual, formal and genre boundaries, adopting a ‘line of flight or deterritorialization’ that enables the thesis to ‘change in nature and connect with other multiplicities.’This line of flight passes through the conventional separation of genre groupings and texts, and, similarly, has been applied in the thesis as a rationale for the diminution of theoretical boundaries. A multiperpectival approach is applied to the permeability of, or transcendent relations of the analysis to the boundaries between genres, between texts and culture, and between actuality and virtual representation. In the thesis there is also a theoretical deterritorialization that consents to a pluralism of theory, which is an approach demonstrated by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. The model of multi-perspectivalism adopted in the thesis engages in establishing connections and similarities between theories, rather than emphasizing contradictory and exclusive practices. The Foucauldian notion of the rules of formation in discourse, Nichols’ theories of documentary representation of reality, Bordwell’s schematic interpretation, and several other positions are critiqued, as the line of flight embarked upon in the thesis intersects with, and passes through both textual and theoretical boundaries. The thesis consists of two parts: firstly, a location of theoretical perspective, in which the issues of theory pertaining to actuality and narrative are explicated, and the methodological approach of the thesis is defined. The second part commences with an analysis of the most familiar instances of actuality in film and television, with particular attention to documentary forms. It then engages in the analysis of films that represent actuality but which, in the process of narrativization, display a convergence of genre conventions. The films selected for analysis include Steven Speilberg's Schindler's List, (1993) Oliver Stone's JFK, (1991) and Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump, (1994) and Contact, (1996). Hence the thesis is concerned with the application of a pluralist theoretical approach, with, however, an emphasis on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notions of rhizome and assemblage. Within this theoretical frame, the connections between actuality and the audio/visual text are explicated, and the formation of text as ‘a rhizome with the world’, is analyzed across a range of examples.

Will these glasses help? Holocaust videotestimony and the transfer of intangible heritage

An analysis of Erica's videotestimony, presented at the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Melbourne, reveals how audio-visual history can act as a medium for the transfer of cultural heritage, despite claims that the trauma of the Holocaust has destroyed the possibility of any meaningful transmissíon. It is argued that the discussion of personal photographs from before and after the Holocaust forms a key component of the videotestimony and constitutes the primary mechanism for intergenerational transfer of Jewish communal heritage, Transfer is further facilitated by the interviewer whose questioning explicitly encourages Erica to reflect on issues of cultural continuity. Significantly, Erica's answers do not always conform to the interviewer's expectations about Jewish communal and religious identification and this can result in tension between the
two. Here too the photographs play an important role in resolving tension between Erica and the interviewer.

Closed vs open corporate social networking communities : a case study of the Victoria Police and Dairy Australia.

The availability of affordable, user-friendly audio-visual equipment, software and the Internet, allows anyone to become a content creator or media outlet. This exploratory case study examines the adoption of social networking by Victoria Police and Diary Australia, a non-media and non-profit organization respectively, in corporate communication, public infmmation and community relations. The paper initiates discussions on the implications for traditional media and audiences of this phenomenon. It content analyzed the two websites during a two-week period and conducted interviews with their moderators about the sites' content, functions and efficacy. The purpose, role and community acceptance of these sites are examined, along with organizational motivations for establishing these channels to reach audiences, bypassing traditional media's gatekeeping function. It highlights how these organizations may set both media and public agendas when traditional media use this web content in their news gathering and reporting, similar to using press releases in the past.

Video abstraction : a systematic review and classification

The demand for various multimedia applications is rapidly increasing due to the recent advance in the computing and network infrastructure, together with the widespread use of digital video technology. Among the key elements for the success of these applications is how to effectively and efficiently manage and store a huge amount of audio visual information, while at the same time providing user-friendly access to the stored data. This has fueled a quickly evolving research area known as video abstraction. As the name implies, video abstraction is a mechanism for generating a short summary of a video, which can either be a sequence of stationary images (keyframes) or moving images (video skims). In terms of browsing and navigation, a good video abstract will enable the user to gain maximum information about the target video sequence in a specified time constraint or sufficient information in the minimum time. Over past years, various ideas and techniques have been proposed towards the effective abstraction of video contents. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic classification of these works. We identify and detail, for each approach, the underlying components and how they are addressed in specific works. © 2007 ACM.

Computational media aesthetics: Finding meaning beautiful

Innovative media management, annotation, delivery, and navigation services will enrich online shopping, help-desk services, and anytime-anywhere training over wireless devices. However, the semantic gap between the rich meaning that users want when they query and browse media and the shallowness of the content descriptions that one can actually compute is weakening today's automatic content-annotation systems. To address such problems, an approach that markedly departs from existing methods based on detecting and annotating low-level audio-visual features is advocated.

Incorporating domain knowledge with video and voice data analysis in news broadcasts

This paper addresses the area of video annotation, indexing and retrieval, and shows how a set of tools can be employed, along with domain knowledge, to detect narrative structure in broadcast news. The initial structure is detected using low-level audio visual processing in conjunction with domain knowledge. Higher level processing may then utilize the initial structure detected to direct processing to improve and extend the initial classification.

The structure detected breaks a news broadcast into segments, each of which contains a single topic of discussion. Further the segments are labeled as a) anchor person or reporter, b) footage with a voice over or c) sound bite. This labeling may be used to provide a summary, for example by presenting a thumbnail for each reporter present in a section of the video. The inclusion of domain knowledge in computation allows more directed application of high level processing, giving much greater efficiency of effort expended. This allows valid deductions to be made about structure and semantics of the contents of a news video stream, as demonstrated by our experiments on CNN news broadcasts.

Media independent knowledge indexing and retrieval

Composing a multimedia presentation may require creation or generation of suitable images and video segments, as well as animation, sound, or special effects. Obtaining images or video sequences can be prohibitively expensive when costs of travel to location, equipment, staff, etc, are considered. Those problems can be alleviated with the use of pictorial and video digital libraries, such libraries require methods for comprehensive indexing and annotation of stored items and efficient retrieval tools.

We propose a system based on user oriented perceptions as they influence query formation in image and video retrieval. We present a method based on user dependent conceptual structures for creating and maintaining indexes to images and video sequences.

Open scholarship : research and publication

Introduction: Sue Owen, Associate University Librarian, Deakin University Library.

Presentations:
Using Creative Commons licences to provide open access in the education and research sectors / Professor Anne Fitzgerald ;
Elsevier and open access / Macy Lee and David Tempest ;
Electronic rights  in academic publishing; a researcher's perspective / Professor Christoph Antons.

Panel discussion, Question and answer.

Includes audio/visual recording of whole Symposium

Web 2.0 : an argument against convergence

Web 2.0 has been a dominant concept in recent discussion and development of Internet applications, businesses and uses. Dating from 2004, the term Web 2.0 is variously understood as new forms of website development and delivery technology, changing uses of the Internet to emphasise sociability over consumption, new understandings of the possible financial exploitation of the web, and more broadly, a new way of thinking about the Internet as a whole. However, Web 2.0 is, conceptually, both more and less than these various understandings and we can only grasp why it has become such a key term in contemporary usage by appreciating two key discursive foundations for this term. Firstly, much Web 2.0 thinking is a re-expression of long-held ideas about the Internet and the web. Secondly, at the particular time when Web 2.0 was made popular, net technology policy makers and financial analysts were primarily enthused by the possibilities of broadband networks for improved and more profitable versions of the well-established businesses of telephony and audio-visual entertainment, and had to some extent consigned novel, web-based services to a lesser role, following the dot.com crash. Thus, as I argue in this paper, Web 2.0 can be understood as a key intervention, from within the dot.com / new media business sector, recovering from the crash, that re-asserts the equal legitimacy of the use of networked computing, over high-speed lines, for computing-oriented activities, and not just video on demand and voice over IP. In short, in the first years of this century, discussions about the future of the Internet had become dominated by arguments for increased broadband access, substantially concerned with providing more traditional video and voice services in new ways. The World Wide Web was seen as relatively unimportant for this purpose, even though it was part of the so-called 'triple play' of voice and data services. At this time, first in the hands of Tim O'Reilly and then from others who took up his position, Web 2.0 became a catchy simple term under which to mount a campaign for the renaissance of the World Wide Web as a quite distinct, yet equally important, form of media and communications. So, Web 2.0 provides evidence that, while there is a convergence of all forms of media and communications towards similar data traffic over the Internet, there remain diverging views over the nature, control and use of the Internet, views that express the degree to which corporate players imagine themselves to be 'media', 'telephony' or 'computing' in primary orientation.

Locating learning: making connections between virtual and physical spaces with mobile touch-screen devices

This paper is concerned with the potential of mobile touch-screen devices and emerging socio-technological practices to support pedagogies of place that provide a means for young people to reflect critically on the social construction of place and to take actions that speak of and to their own locatedness. Drawing on de Certeau’s (1984) concept of space as a practiced place and Massey’s (2005) perspective of spatiality and interrelatedness, we examine two school-based examples of learning activities that bring together the virtual and physical as in experiences and representations of place. The first example is an Australian local history unit, where lower secondary school students participated in a series of field trips, planned and conducted under the guidance of an indigenous elder. They used Smartphones and iPads to capture and create personalised audio-visual records of their knowledge of place that were then used to create geo-location games. In the second example, upper primary school students worked with local authorities and environmental educators to select sites for two environmental monitoring posts, which were then installed and provided a locus for the students’ school-based environmental science learning as well as a vehicle for community engagement. Drawing on interview, video and photographic data, this paper examines the way mobile technologies were deployed for student knowledge production, engagement with place, reconstruction of place and engagement with community.

Piloting the feasibility of head-mounted video technology to augment student feedback during simulated clinical decision-making: an observational design pilot study

BACKGROUND: Clinical decision-making is a complex activity that is critical to patient safety. Simulation, augmented by feedback, affords learners the opportunity to learn critical clinical decision-making skills. More detailed feedback following simulation exercises has the potential to further enhance student learning, particularly in relation to developing improved clinical decision-making skills. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the feasibility of head-mounted video camera recordings, to augment feedback, following acute patient deterioration simulations. DESIGN: Pilot study using an observational design. METHODS: Ten final-year nursing students participated in three simulation exercises, each focussed on detection and management of patient deterioration. Two observers collected behavioural data using an adapted version of Gaba's Clinical Simulation Tool, to provide verbal feedback to each participant, following each simulation exercise. Participants wore a head-mounted video camera during the second simulation exercise only. Video recordings were replayed to participants to augment feedback, following the second simulation exercise. Data were collected on: participant performance (observed and perceived); participant perceptions of feedback methods; and head-mounted video camera recording feasibility and capability for detailed audio-visual feedback. RESULTS: Management of patient deterioration improved for six participants (60%). Increased perceptions of confidence (70%) and competence (80%), were reported by the majority of participants. Few participants (20%) agreed that the video recording specifically enhanced their learning. The visual field of the head-mounted video camera was not always synchronised with the participant's field of vision, thus affecting the usefulness of some recordings. CONCLUSION: The usefulness of the video recordings, to enhance verbal feedback to participants on detection and management of simulated patient deterioration, was inconclusive. Modification of the video camera glasses, to improve visual-field synchronisation with participants' actual visual field, is recommended to further explore this technology for enhancing student performance.