Realidade interativa: protótipo de telejornal interativo para TV Digital baseado no conceito de infotretenimento

The goal of this article is to describe the production of “Interactive Reality” program, prototype for interactive Digital TV newscast based on the concept of infotainment, defined as a genre hybrid television show between information and entertainment. Therefore, it is proposed a script with interactive content, a prototype of the newscast, its results and implications for future researches.

A estética da imagem na TV digital

This text reflects on the techniques and the process of image production and its artistic composition to digital television in high defini- tion, whereas the 4:3 and 16:9 formats will exist until shutdown of the analog signal. Within this period, consumers of television programming that have analog receivers will continue to see the images in 4:3 format. That fact determines that the productions in high definition, while capturing images with larger viewing area and have high contrast ratio (>1000:1) must be main- tain the elements of visual storytelling within the smallest area and with the contrast ratio of the analog tv (30:1), at the risk of distorting visually the messages produced by the directors.

ARSTUDIO: estúdio virtual para produção de conteúdos audiovisuais em realidade aumentada para TV digital

Virtual Studio is a system developed for the creation of virtual sets , as well as any three-dimensional virtual objects that can be digitally integrated to the scenes captured on a real television studio . Through techniques such as chroma-key , computer graphics , augmented reality and virtual reality is possible flexibility in producing content for digital TV , reduce cost and meet 12.485/2011 law , the Brazilian Law of Pay TV , which has among its objectives to increase the production and circulation of diverse and quality Brazilian audiovisual content, generating jobs, income , royalties, professionalism and strengthening of national culture (ANCINE , Brazilian Nacional Cinema Agency ). Based on this background , an overview of the benefits of using the technologies mentioned for the production of content for digital television is presented . This work involves the development of a system of Interactive Virtual Studio called ARSTUDIO per team of researchers from the Posgraduate Program in Digital Television: Information and Knowledge at UNESP , São Paulo State University in Bauru , State of São Paulo, Brazil .

Social TV Unesp: proposta de aplicativo em segunda tela com ênfase em modelo de negócios para TV Universitária UNESP

The audiovisual market carefully observes a tendency in television consumption habit: viewers are increasingly watching television content while surfing the internet through mobile devices like tablets, smartphones and laptops. Known as second screen, viewers interact simultaneously across these devices, sharing information about the programming on social networks, seeking additional information about the contents well aired, in addition to being likely to purchase products and services on platforms of mobile-commerce persuaded by the scheduling of programming through commercials. Given this, the aim of this article is to propose and prototyping an application visually in second screen with emphasis on business model with possible application on TV Unesp, where the viewer to interact with the programming through the application is exposed to previously scheduled ads, links to mobile-commerce and posts indicating purchase suggestions.

Gamificação: modelagem de conteúdos para programas e aplicativos educativos no ambiente da TV digital interativa

With the deployment of Digital TV in Brazil, there is a need to foment the development and production of interactive audiovisual quality content, especially for programs that present educational messages from the entertainment concept - defined as Edutertainment. The objective of this study is to propose application of the gamification as a link of communication to encourage and modify user behavior, through a narrative that encourages intrinsic motivation for learning and entertainment in this media. This paper points out that there are few models of screenplays for applications production, particularly educational, with simultaneous interactive applications for television flow or complementary programming content offered. For this reason, a special attention is given to the screenplay, by virtue of inserting in its construction, the elements that make up the mechanics and dynamics of games. As a result, is shown the entry "Gamification-iDTV", which defines these two scenarios, as well as the development of a modeling methodology of a content and process, supported by conceptual maps, wireframes and roadmaps, substantiating the conception and elaboration of screenplay's prototype with elements of gamification for educational programs and its interaction applications.

A TV no ecossistema dos onívoros digitais

A quick setup of the digital environment that occurs in these first decades of the twentyfirst century has involved the use of electronic devices for consume content both at home, at work and on the go (ComScore, 2011). The emergence of this vast multiplatform digital landscape impels to know of individual and complementary use of these devices with ubiquitous nature or not. The widespread adoption of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices via internet makes users / consumers of these devices to feed a diet based on a constant flow of digital content across different platforms. The objective of this paper is to describe the role of television in the context of the Media Ecology which is established by the "digital omnivores" a new group of consumers whose name, according Canavilhas (2013, p.03), "is related with the platforms that consumers use to access the Internet, but also to the type of individual and multiplatform consumption they do.”

Uma mirada em dois projetos e concepções sul-americanas de TV pública digital: análise comparativa entre TV Brasil e Canal 7 Argentina

Esta tesis es resultado de un intenso trabajo de investigación realizado de agosto de 2014 a agosto de 2015, con financiación de la Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp). El objetivo se centró en la realización de un análisis, aunque preliminar, del papel de la TV pública con tecnología digital, como también de las tendencias, desafíos y perspectivas para consolidarla, tanto en Brasil como en Argentina, países con diversas similitudes en contextos económicos, sociales, políticos y culturales. Para cumplir los objetivos, estudiamos los recientes proyectos gubernamentales de televisión pública en los dos países suramericanos. El gobierno argentino invirtió en modernización en Canal 7 (antiguo Argentina Televisora Color-ATC), una emisora de casi seis décadas de funcionamiento, que ha sido prácticamente refundada a partir de los investimentos públicos del gobierno nacional argentino, realizados para digitalizar los sistemas de transmisión y de recepción de televisión abierta. El nuevo Canal 7 pasó a servir de cabeza de red del sistema de televisión pública de Argentina. En Brasil, el gobierno creó a fines del 2007, la Empresa Brasil de Comunicación (EBC), estructura administrativa que opera la red de televisión pública de TV Brasil. Ambos proyectos prometen construir y gestionar sistemas nacionales abiertos, modernos y competitivos de TV Pública Digital Abierta (TVPDA). Esta tesis también describe y compara de modo sucinto el desarrollo histórico de la radiodifusión - evidenciando la televisión como una plataforma en permanente disputa comunicacional, política, ideológica, publicitaria, cultural y económica -, tal como los modelos de televisión pública y comercial en cada uno de los dos países analizados (no entiendo la expresión). La estudiante de periodismo pretende confrontar el desarrollo de una estructura nacional de televisión pública iniciada en el...

Smart histogram analysis applied to the skull-stripping problem in T1-weighted MRI

In this paper we address the "skull-stripping" problem in 3D MR images. We propose a new method that employs an efficient and unique histogram analysis. A fundamental component of this analysis is an algorithm for partitioning a histogram based on the position of the maximum deviation from a Gaussian fit. In our experiments we use a comprehensive image database, including both synthetic and real MRI. and compare our method with other two well-known methods, namely BSE and BET. For all datasets we achieved superior results. Our method is also highly independent of parameter tuning and very robust across considerable variations of noise ratio.

Effective Properties Evaluation for Smart Composite Materials

The purpose of this article is to present a method which consists in the development of unit cell numerical models for smart composite materials with piezoelectric fibers made of PZT embedded in a non-piezoelectric matrix (epoxy resin). This method evaluates a globally homogeneous medium equivalent to the original composite, using a representative volume element (RVE). The suitable boundary conditions allow the simulation of all modes of the overall deformation arising from any arbitrary combination of mechanical and electrical loading. In the first instance, the unit cell is applied to predict the effective material coefficients of the transversely isotropic piezoelectric composite with circular cross section fibers. The numerical results are compared to other methods reported in the literature and also to results previously published, in order to evaluate the method proposal. In the second step, the method is applied to calculate the equivalent properties for smart composite materials with square cross section fibers. Results of comparison between different combinations of circular and square fiber geometries, observing the influence of the boundary conditions and arrangements are presented.

Video Quality Assessments on Digital TV and Video Streaming Services Using Objective Metrics

There is a wide range of telecommunications services that transmit voice, video and data through complex transmission networks and in some cases, the service has not an acceptable quality level for the end user. In this sense the study of methods for assessing video quality and voice have a very important role. This paper presents a classification scheme, based on different criteria, of the methods and metrics that are being studied in recent years. This paper presents how the video quality is affected by degradation in the transmission channel in two kinds of services: Digital TV (ISDB-TB) due the fading in the air interface and video streaming service on an IP network due packet loss. For Digital TV tests was set up a scenario where the digital TV transmitter is connected to an RF channel emulator, where are inserted different fading models and at the end, the videos are saved in a mobile device. The tests of streaming video were performed in an isolated scenario of IP network, which are scheduled several network conditions, resulting in different qualities of video reception. The video quality assessment is performed using objective assessment methods: PSNR, SSIM and VQM. The results show how the losses in the transmission channel affects the quality of end-user experience on both services studied.

Investigating Smart Sampling as a population initialization method for Differential Evolution in continuous problems

Recently, researches have shown that the performance of metaheuristics can be affected by population initialization. Opposition-based Differential Evolution (ODE), Quasi-Oppositional Differential Evolution (QODE), and Uniform-Quasi-Opposition Differential Evolution (UQODE) are three state-of-the-art methods that improve the performance of the Differential Evolution algorithm based on population initialization and different search strategies. In a different approach to achieve similar results, this paper presents a technique to discover promising regions in a continuous search-space of an optimization problem. Using machine-learning techniques, the algorithm named Smart Sampling (SS) finds regions with high possibility of containing a global optimum. Next, a metaheuristic can be initialized inside each region to find that optimum. SS and DE were combined (originating the SSDE algorithm) to evaluate our approach, and experiments were conducted in the same set of benchmark functions used by ODE, QODE and UQODE authors. Results have shown that the total number of function evaluations required by DE to reach the global optimum can be significantly reduced and that the success rate improves if SS is employed first. Such results are also in consonance with results from the literature, stating the importance of an adequate starting population. Moreover, SS presents better efficacy to find initial populations of superior quality when compared to the other three algorithms that employ oppositional learning. Finally and most important, the SS performance in finding promising regions is independent of the employed metaheuristic with which SS is combined, making SS suitable to improve the performance of a large variety of optimization techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effective properties evaluation for smart composite materials

The purpose of this article is to present a method which consists in the development of unit cell numerical models for smart composite materials with piezoelectric fibers made of PZT embedded in a non-piezoelectric matrix (epoxy resin). This method evaluates a globally homogeneous medium equivalent to the original composite, using a representative volume element (RVE). The suitable boundary conditions allow the simulation of all modes of the overall deformation arising from any arbitrary combination of mechanical and electrical loading. In the first instance, the unit cell is applied to predict the effective material coefficients of the transversely isotropic piezoelectric composite with circular cross section fibers. The numerical results are compared to other methods reported in the literature and also to results previously published, in order to evaluate the method proposal. In the second step, the method is applied to calculate the equivalent properties for smart composite materials with square cross section fibers. Results of comparison between different combinations of circular and square fiber geometries, observing the influence of the boundary conditions and arrangements are presented.

TV-L1 optical flow estimation

[EN] This article describes an implementation of the optical flow estimation method introduced by Zach, Pock and Bischof. This method is based on the minimization of a functional containing a data term using the L norm and a regularization term using the total variation of the flow. The main feature of this formulation is that it allows discontinuities in the flow field, while being more robust to noise than the classical approach. The algorithm is an efficient numerical scheme, which solves a relaxed version of the problem by alternate minimization.

Discontinuity preserving in TV-L1 optical flow methods

[EN] We analyze the discontinuity preserving problem in TV-L1 optical flow methods. This type of methods typically creates rounded effects at flow boundaries, which usually do not coincide with object contours. A simple strategy to overcome this problem consists in inhibiting the diffusion at high image gradients. In this work, we first introduce a general framework for TV regularizers in optical flow and relate it with some standard approaches. Our survey takes into account several methods that use decreasing functions for mitigating the diffusion at image contours. Consequently, this kind of strategies may produce instabilities in the estimation of the optical flows. Hence, we study the problem of instabilities and show that it actually arises from an ill-posed formulation. From this study, it is possible to come across with different schemes to solve this problem. One of these consists in separating the pure TV process from the mitigating strategy. This has been used in another work and we demonstrate here that it has a good performance. Furthermore, we propose two alternatives to avoid the instability problems: (i) we study a fully automatic approach that solves the problem based on the information of the whole image; (ii) we derive a semi-automatic approach that takes into account the image gradients in a close neighborhood adapting the parameter in each position. In the experimental results, we present a detailed study and comparison between the different alternatives. These methods provide very good results, especially for sequences with a few dominant gradients. Additionally, a surprising effect of these approaches is that they can cope with occlusions. This can be easily achieved by using strong regularizations and high penalizations at image contours.