Multimodal Indexing of Presentation Videos

This thesis presents four novel methods to help users efficiently and effectively retrieve information from unstructured and unsourced multimedia sources, in particular the increasing amount and variety of presentation videos such as those in e-learning, conference recordings, corporate talks, and student presentations. We demonstrate a system to summarize, index and cross-reference such videos, and measure the quality of the produced indexes as perceived by the end users. We introduce four major semantic indexing cues: text, speaker faces, graphics, and mosaics, going beyond standard tag based searches and simple video playbacks. This work aims at recognizing visual content "in the wild", where the system cannot rely on any additional information besides the video itself. For text, within a scene text detection and recognition framework, we present a novel locally optimal adaptive binarization algorithm, implemented with integral histograms. It determines of an optimal threshold that maximizes the between-classes variance within a subwindow, with computational complexity independent from the size of the window itself. We obtain character recognition rates of 74%, as validated against ground truth of 8 presentation videos spanning over 1 hour and 45 minutes, which almost doubles the baseline performance of an open source OCR engine. For speaker faces, we detect, track, match, and finally select a humanly preferred face icon per speaker, based on three quality measures: resolution, amount of skin, and pose. We register a 87% accordance (51 out of 58 speakers) between the face indexes automatically generated from three unstructured presentation videos of approximately 45 minutes each, and human preferences recorded through Mechanical Turk experiments. For diagrams, we locate graphics inside frames showing a projected slide, cluster them according to an on-line algorithm based on a combination of visual and temporal information, and select and color-correct their representatives to match human preferences recorded through Mechanical Turk experiments. We register 71% accuracy (57 out of 81 unique diagrams properly identified, selected and color-corrected) on three hours of videos containing five different presentations. For mosaics, we combine two existing suturing measures, to extend video images into in-the-world coordinate system. A set of frames to be registered into a mosaic are sampled according to the PTZ camera movement, which is computed through least square estimation starting from the luminance constancy assumption. A local features based stitching algorithm is then applied to estimate the homography among a set of video frames and median blending is used to render pixels in overlapping regions of the mosaic. For two of these indexes, namely faces and diagrams, we present two novel MTurk-derived user data collections to determine viewer preferences, and show that they are matched in selection by our methods. The net result work of this thesis allows users to search, inside a video collection as well as within a single video clip, for a segment of presentation by professor X on topic Y, containing graph Z

Unfulfilled potential : a case study of traditional news media and the Internet.

The Internet offers a tremendous opportunity for traditional media to expand and/or enhance news stories. This thesis is an exploration of the convergent journalism practices of three news organizations in a medium-sized market. It employed content analysis and in-depth interviews to compare the news stories of a newspaper, television station, and radio station with content on each organization\u27s Internet website. While the three media organizations in this case study had different approaches to convergent journalism, they each utilized some type of multimedia technique on their websites including slideshows, videos, audio, hyperlinks, and reader interactivity. For the most part, however, online news stories were replications of their traditional counterparts. Major factors affecting how traditional media used the Internet to tell news stories included available resources, training, and organizational priorities. Some news stories, such as breaking news topics and sports, appear to be more likely to utilize elements of convergent journalism

The Practice and Evolution of Video Game Translation: Expanding the Definition of Translation

This paper looks at the practice and history of video game translation, with the goal of expanding the definition of translation. Video game translation is a complex process that incorporates a number of aspects from other types of translation, such as literary, audiovisual, and software translation, to form a dynamic whole. As a new medium, video games also present their own challenges to translation in the form of interactivity, technology, non-textual and extra-textual elements, audience involvement, and new business practices. Even though video games are a relatively new medium, the practice of translating them has undergone drastic transformations over the years. A case study of the various official translations of Final Fantasy IV provides a brief overview of this development to help the reader get a complete understanding of the video game translation process. The paper concludes by arguing that the different sign systems present in video games are integral to the player’s understanding of the game, and should be considered as aspects that can be translated. Parallels are also drawn between the translation process and the medium of the video game, to show that different approaches to translation can provide the audience with a more holistic view of a work

If I Ruled the World: Putting Hip Hop on the Atlas

“If I Ruled the World: Putting Hip Hop on the Atlas” contends for a third wave of Global Hip Hop Studies that builds on the work of the first two waves, identifies Hip Hop as an African diasporic phenomenon, and aligns with Hip Hop where there are no boundaries between Hip Hop inside and outside of the United States. Joanna Daguirane Da Sylva adds to the cipha with her examination of Didier Awadi. Da Sylva\u27s excellent work reveals the ways in which Hip Hoppa Didier Awadi elevates Pan-Africanism and uses Hip Hop as a tool to decolonize the minds of African peoples. The interview by Tasha Iglesias and myself of members of Generation Hip Hop and the Universal Hip Hop Museum provides a primary source and highlights two Hip Hop organizations with chapters around the world. Mich Yonah Nyawalo’s Negotiating French Muslim Identities through Hip Hop details Hip Hop artists Médine and Diam’s, who are both French and Muslim, and whose self-identification can be understood as political strategies in response to the French Republic’s marginalization of Muslims. In “Configurations of Space and Identity in Hip Hop: Performing ’Global South’,” Igor Johannsen adds to this special issue an examination of the spatiality of the Global South and how Hip Hoppas in the Global South oppose global hegemony. The final essay, “‘I Got the Mics On, My People Speak’: On the Rise of Aboriginal Australian Hip Hop,” by Benjamin Kelly and Rhyan Clapham, provides a thorough analysis of Aboriginal Hip Hop and situates it within postcolonialism. Overall, the collection of these essays points to the multiple identities, political economies, cultures, and scholarly fields and disciplines that Hip Hop interacts with around the world

Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence

This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos)

3D coding tools final report

Livrable D4.3 du projet ANR PERSEECe rapport a été réalisé dans le cadre du projet ANR PERSEE (n° ANR-09-BLAN-0170). Exactement il correspond au livrable D4.3 du projet. Son titre : 3D coding tools final repor

The Art of Adaptation in Film and Video Games

This Special Issue of Arts explores the art and practice of adaptation in several different mediums with a focus on film and video games. The topics covered include experimental game design, narrative design, film and trauma, games adapted from literature, video game cinema, film and the pandemic, film and the environment, film and immigration, and film and culture

Sex Every Afternoon: Pink Film and the Body of Pornographic Cinema in Japan.

Sex Every Afternoon: Pink Film and the Body of Pornographic Cinema in Japan is a critical reconsideration of the modes and meanings of the Pink Film; a form of soft-core, narrative, theatrical adult film produced in Japan from the 1960s to the present day. Focusing on the period between the early 1980s and the early 2010s, I combine fieldwork with historiographical and theoretical reassessments to explore this industry through the three main dimensions of its contemporary existence—the pro-filmic spaces of production at shooting locations and in studios, the imaginary and remediated realms of the pornographic image on movie and TV screens, and the physical environments of the adult specialty cinema network in Japan. In counterargument to a growing body of knowledge that has, since the rapid spread of adult video formats in Japan in the early 1980s, emphasized the material and contextual specificities of Pink Film and reified the format as an essentially filmic, distinctly theatrical, and particularly Japanese cinema, I examine the ways in which Pink Film has acted instead as a (re)productive point of translation between presumably disparate moving image technologies and audiences. I challenge the assumption that pornographic film, as a ‘body genre,’ has the unusual power to directly address or affect spectators’ bodies. I argue that while Pink Film does exhibit an intimate relationship with the bodies of producers and performers that create it, the films themselves focus as much on the spectacular coupling of media technologies as they do the simulated sexual contact of actors in the frame. I also show how adult cinema customers often have no interest in the movie at all, and instead utilize these spaces in ways that are directly disputed by theater management and disavowed by filmic narratives. Sex Every Afternoon recalibrates the ‘bodies’ of this body genre to align with the real people who create Pink Films. It issues a challenge to film and pornography studies by arguing that a close textual and contextual evaluation of this medium reveals that the romantic relationship between the moving image and the living spectator is, at best, uncertain.PHDIndependent Interdepartmental Degree ProgramUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116708/1/maiku_1.pd

Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence

This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos)

Promoting Awareness for the Cibachrome Association

We completed our project on behalf of the Cibachrome Association of Marly, Switzerland to enhance their public awareness and outreach. Due to the technical nature of their materials, we focused on outreach methods that would benefit photographic curators, conservators and other interested members of the public. We created a revised, expanded website and a new Wiki article, using feedback from the Association’s target demographics. This will help the Cibachrome Association effectively publicize their information and gather further public awareness