SemanticMetadata.net

Nice but out of reach: popular multimedia platforms

Netflix was reported last year to be the source of nearly 30% of the North American internet backbone traffic. Well that’s impressive, but that’s something that many non North Americans can’t understand … and there’s a simple reason for that: the service is not available in many countries. Several well known and well received services are restricted to a range of IP adresses that are considered in a geographic location where users have access to this services. Here is a small but still interesting list of services that have obviously impact on the usage of the internet, but cannot be accessed in many European countries.

• Netflix – major video streaming service (subscription based)
• Pandora – music streaming service / adaptive online radio (ad supported)
• Hulu – major video streaming service of already aired TV content (ad supported)
• Vevo – music video streaming service (ad supported). Most of the music videos on Vevo are available on YouTube for Austrians, but most of these music videos are not accessible of Germans.
• NBC - video streaming service of already aired NBC TV content.
• ABC - video streaming service of already aired ABC TV content.

Lire and Lire Demo v 0.9 released

I just released Lire and Lire Demo in version 0.9 on sourceforge.net. Basically it’s the alpha version with additional speed and stability enhancements for bag of visual words (BoVW) indexing. While this has already been possible in earlier versions I re-furbished vocabulary creation (k-means clustering) and indexing to support up to 4 CPU cores. I also integrated a function to add documents to BoVW indexes incrementally. So a list of major changes since Lire 0.8 includes

• Major speed-up due to change and re-write of indexing strategies for local features
• Auto color correlation and color histogram features improved
• Re-ranking filter based on global features and LSA
• Parallel bag of visual words indexing and search supporting SURF and SIFT including incremental index updates (see also in the wiki)
• Added functionality to Lire Demo including support for new Lire features and a new result list view

Download and try:

• Source and binaries (or as tar.bz2)
• Lire Demo

MMM 2012 Call for Special Session Proposals

International Conference on Multimedia Modeling 2012
Jan. 4-6, 2012, Klagenfurt, Austria
http://mmm2012.org/special-sessions/

The International MultiMedia Modeling Conference (MMM) is a leading international conference for researchers and industry practitioners to share their new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences from all MMM related areas. MMM2012 welcomes proposals for special sessions focusing on specific new challenges in multimedia research. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• 3D object and face retrieval
• Annotation and multimedia metadata
• Cross-modal and cross-media analysis and modeling
• Events and actions in multimedia
• Multimedia in interactive entertainment
• Music and audio content analysis
• Modeling user context in multimedia retrieval

Also the topics mentioned in the conference call for papers in the fields of multimedia content analysis, multimedia signal processing and communications, and multimedia applications and services (see also http://mmm2012.org/call-for-papers/) are of interest for the special session.

A typical MMM special session features 5-6 contribution discussing the proposed topic. The proposal should include the following information:

• Tentative title of the proposed special session
• Names and affiliations of the organizers (including brief bio and contact information)
• Session abstract (statement of the significance of topic)
• List of potential contributors (together with tentative paper titles) who agree to submit a paper if the proposal is accepted

Proposals will be evaluated based on the timeliness and significance of the topic, as well as the qualifications of the organizers and the tentative papers proposed.

Papers of accepted special sessions need to be submitted using the MMM2012 conference submission system. Special session organizers will be responsible for managing the review process of the papers submitted to their special sessions. All special session papers will be included in the conference proceedings.

Important dates:

• Proposal submission: June 6, 2011
• Notifications: June 20, 2011
• Papers submission: July 22, 2011

Special session co-chairs:

• Marco Bertini, Università di Firenze, Italy, bertini<at>dsi.unifi.it
• Mathias Lux, Klagenfurt University, Austria, mlux<at>itec.uni-klu.ac.at

For more information, please visit http://www.mmm2012.org/

Final Call for Papers: Special Issue on Searching Speech

ACM Transactions on Information Systems is soliciting contributions to a special issue on the topic of “Searching Speech”. The special issue will be devoted to algorithms and systems that use speech recognition and other types of spoken audio processing techniques to retrieve information, and, in particular, to provide access to spoken audio content or multimedia content with a speech track.

Submission Deadline: 1 March 2011

The field of spoken content indexing and retrieval has a long history dating back to the development of the first broadcast news retrieval systems in the 1990s. More recently, however, work on searching speech has been moving towards spoken audio that is produced spontaneously and in conversational settings. In contrast to the planned speech that is typical for the broadcast news domain, spontaneous, conversational speech is characterized by high variability and the lack of inherent structure. Domains in which researchers face such challenges include: lectures, meetings, interviews, debates, conversational broadcast (e.g., talk-shows), podcasts, call center recordings, cultural heritage archives, social video on the Web, spoken natural language queries and the Spoken Web.
We invite the submission of papers that describe research in the following areas:

• Integration of information retrieval algorithms with speech recognition and audio analysis techniques
• Interfaces and techniques to improve user interaction with speech collections
• Indexing diverse, large scale collections
• Search effectiveness and efficiency, including exploitation of additional information sources

For more information see http://tois.acm.org/announcement.html

CfP Workshop on Multimedia on the Web 2011

in conjunction with i-Know and i-Semantics 2011
8th Sept. 2011, Graz, Austria
http://www.mmweb2011.org

Streaming video has recently surpassed peer-to-peer networks in terms of network capacity hunger. Reports estimate a share of 40% of peak network capacity dedicated to entertainment, mostly streaming video. A large share of this traffic originates from web based services. YouTube alone takes up to 8% of the prime time internet traffic. So multimedia on the web is currently a big issue. While transmission currently works in a best effort system, multimedia information system on the web are far from being perfect. Retrieval, annotation, validated and useful metadata, reliable and trusted services, and user interaction and context-based adaptation are still under discussion and allow improvement. Currently, the Web itself faces dramatic changes, looking for example at the spread of social networks, Linked Data or the impact of HTML5 or WebM. These activities also have a deep effect on multimedia data and content provider. Following this, we aim to bring together researchers from the area of multimedia and the web to discuss innovative ideas and new directions in this workshop.

Continue reading CfP Workshop on Multimedia on the Web 2011…

ACM MM 2010 Open Source Competition started

Currently I’m sitting in this year’s ACM Multimedia open source software competition sessions. Marco Bertini is our chair and we have already seen openSMILE and the Open SVC Decoder. The openSMILE framework is something I’ll definitely revisit as it allows for emotion classification in speech . Currently the Sonic Visualizer is shown.

ACM Multimedia Call for Volunteers out …

ACM Multimedia – taking place in Firenze, Italy, last week of Oct. – still is in need for student volunteers. I personally think this is a great opportunity to learn about big conferences and the community. If you are interested ensure to send your bid until Oct. 7th 2010. Find the call here.

Links

• http://www.acmmm10.org/volunteers/

CfP Workshop on Interactive Multimedia Applications (WIMA)

URL: http://tinyurl.com/wima2010

Multimedia applications have become ubiquitous lately. People record and watch videos on mobile and stationary devices, they use non linear video editors, and they share and organize their personal multimedia archives. Lots of research has been  done on the technical aspects  of multimedia, like streaming, presentation, transcoding, adaptation and content  based retrieval  and  analysis.  But  handling  multimedia  is  an interactive process and  users have  to be  taken into  account. Even consumption is often accompanied  with communication,  non linear  browsing and search. This interactivity in multimedia applications is a challenging yet  very promising topic  as especially  in multimedia  applications people  more often accept innovative ideas and fundamental changes more easily.

This workshop should bring  together researchers and practitioners  from the fields of Multimedia and Human-Computer Interaction research  (HCI). In this workshop we aim  to discuss recent scientific advances  and also first results of greenhouse work in the field of interactive  multimedia applications.  We also  encourage the  submission of  papers presenting studies  on  interactivity  in  multimedia  systems  or  discussing  the development of applications in this field.

Topics of interest
Topics include the aspects of interactivity in the following fields:

• Multimedia Retrieval, Browsing & Navigation
• User Intentions in Multimedia Search, Annotation & Production
• Multimedia Production and Post-Production
• Multimedia in Specialized Domains (e.g. Medical Scenarios, Sports, Security, etc.)
• Image, Audio and Video Analysis
• Mobile Multimedia Applications
• Multimedia on the Web
• Social Multimedia
• Multimedia Management and Databases
• Distributed Multimedia Systems

We also encourage the submission of greenhouse work and preliminary results to be discussed in the workshop.

Submission
Authors are invited to submit papers in the following categories:

• Full papers (14-20 pages)
• Short papers (6-14 pages)
• Posters (4 pages)

All papers have  to be formatted  according to the  Springer LNCS Style. Submission is handled by easychair, see http://tinyurl.com/wima2010 for details.

Important Dates

• EXTENDED to July 11, 2010 Deadline for Paper Submission
• July 30, 2010 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection
• August 22, 2010 Camera-Ready Deadline
• Nov 4 & 5, 2010 USAB 2010: HCI in Work & Learning, Life & Leisure

Program Committee

• Christian Timmerer, Klagenfurt University, AT
• Dalibor Mitrovic, TU Wien, AT
• Frank Hopfgartner, International Computer Science Institute, USA
• Harald Kosch, University of Passau, DE
• Mario Döller, University of Passau, DE
• Markus Strohmaier, Graz University of Technology, AT
• Martha Larson, TU Delft, NL
• Oge Marques, Florida Atlantic University, US
• Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen, DE
• Tao Mei, Microsoft Research Asia, P.R. China
• Vincent Charvillait, ENSEEIHT Toulouse, FR
• Werner Bailer, Joanneum Research, AT
• Yiwei Cao, RWTH Aachen, DE
• Yu Cao, California State University of Fresno, US

Workshop Chairs

• Klaus Schöffmann, Klagenfurt University, AT
• Laszlo Böszörmenyi, Klagenfurt University, AT
• Mathias Lux, Klagenfurt University, AT

For further questions please contact the program chairs at wima2010 <at> itec.uni-klu.ac.at

ZoRa Photo Director

Just got word from Berthold Daum that he has integrated LIRe in the ZoRa Photo Director. That’s desktop asset management application, written in Java which allows for management of large photo collections. Source and binaries (Win & Linux) are available at http://www.photozora.org. Not to forget: it’s built on Eclipse!

Links

• http://www.photozora.org

CfP Workshop on Interoperable Social Multimedia Applications (WISMA 2010)

11th International Workshop of the Multimedia Metadata Community
http://dmag.ac.upc.edu/conferences/wisma2010/

• Submission due: 28th February 2010
• Workshop dates: 19th-20th May 2010
• Workshop venue: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona (Spain)

In the Web 2.0, a growing amount of multimedia content is being shared on Social Networks. Due to the dynamic and ubiquitous nature of this content (and associated descriptors), new interesting challenges for indexing, access, and search and retrieval have arisen.
In addition, there is a growing concern on privacy protection, as a lot of personal data is being exchanged. Teenagers (and even younger kids), for example, require special protection applications; while adults are willing to have a higher control over the access to content.
Furthermore, the integration of mobile technologies with the Web 2.0 applications is also an interesting area of research that needs to be addressed; not only in terms of content protection, but also considering the implementation of new and enriched context-aware applications.
Finally, social multimedia is also expected to improve the performance of traditional multimedia information search and retrieval approaches by contributing to bridge the semantic gap. The integration of these aspects, however, is not trivial and has created a new interdisciplinary area of research.
In any case, there is a common issue that needs to be addressed in all the previously identified social multimedia applications: the interoperability and extensibility of their applications. Thus, the workshop is particularly interested in research contributions based on standards.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
•       Privacy in social networks
•       Access control in social networks
•       Social media analysis
•       Social media retrieval
•       Context-awareness in social networks
•       Mobile applications scenario
•       Social networks ontologies and interoperability
•       Security and privacy ontologies
•       Content distribution over social networks
•       Multimedia ontologies and interoperability
•       Multimedia search and retrieval
•       Semantic metadata management
•       Collaborative tagging
•       Interaction between access control and privacy policies
•       Social networks and policy languages
•       Policy management

Research Papers: Papers should describe original and significant work in the research and industrial practice of related topics. (i) Long papers: up to 8 pages, will normally be particularly focused on research studies, applications and experiments (ii) Short papers: up to 4 pages, will be particularly suitable for reporting work-in-progress, interim results, or as a position paper submission.

Applications and Industrial Presentations: Proposals for presentations of applications and tools, including reports on the application and utilisation of tools, industrial practices and models, or tool/system demonstrations. Abstract: 2 pages.

All submissions and proposals are to be in English and submitted in PDF format at the WISMA paper submission web site (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wisma2010) on or before 28th February 2010. Papers should be formatted according to LNCS style (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0). The workshop proceedings are to be published as a volume at CEUR Workshop Proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org).