Full interpretation of minimal images

The goal in this work is to model the process of ‘full interpretation’ of object images, which is the ability to identify and localize all semantic features and parts that are recognized by human observers. The task is approached by dividing the interpretation of the complete object to the interpretation of multiple reduced but interpretable local regions. In such reduced regions, interpretation is simpler, since the number of semantic components is small, and the variability of possible configurations is low. We model the interpretation process by identifying primitive components and relations that play a useful role in local interpretation by humans. To identify useful components and relations used in the interpretation process, we consider the interpretation of ‘minimal configurations’: these are reduced local regions, which are minimal in the sense that further reduction renders them unrecognizable and uninterpretable. We show that such minimal interpretable images have useful properties, which we use to identify informative features and relations used for full interpretation. We describe our interpretation model, and show results of detailed interpretations of minimal configurations, produced automatically by the model. Finally, we discuss implications of full interpretation to difficult visual tasks, such as recognizing human activities or interactions, which are beyond the scope of current models of visual recognition.This work was supported by the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), funded by NSF STC award CCF-1231216

Scene extraction in motion pictures

This paper addresses the challenge of bridging the semantic gap between the rich meaning users desire when they query to locate and browse media and the shallowness of media descriptions that can be computed in today\u27s content management systems. To facilitate high-level semantics-based content annotation and interpretation, we tackle the problem of automatic decomposition of motion pictures into meaningful story units, namely scenes. Since a scene is a complicated and subjective concept, we first propose guidelines from fill production to determine when a scene change occurs. We then investigate different rules and conventions followed as part of Fill Grammar that would guide and shape an algorithmic solution for determining a scene. Two different techniques using intershot analysis are proposed as solutions in this paper. In addition, we present different refinement mechanisms, such as film-punctuation detection founded on Film Grammar, to further improve the results. These refinement techniques demonstrate significant improvements in overall performance. Furthermore, we analyze errors in the context of film-production techniques, which offer useful insights into the limitations of our method

Human-machine cooperation in large-scale multimedia retrieval : a survey

Large-Scale Multimedia Retrieval(LSMR) is the task to fast analyze a large amount of multimedia data like images or videos and accurately find the ones relevant to a certain semantic meaning. Although LSMR has been investigated for more than two decades in the fields of multimedia processing and computer vision, a more interdisciplinary approach is necessary to develop an LSMR system that is really meaningful for humans. To this end, this paper aims to stimulate attention to the LSMR problem from diverse research fields. By explaining basic terminologies in LSMR, we first survey several representative methods in chronological order. This reveals that due to prioritizing the generality and scalability for large-scale data, recent methods interpret semantic meanings with a completely different mechanism from humans, though such humanlike mechanisms were used in classical heuristic-based methods. Based on this, we discuss human-machine cooperation, which incorporates knowledge about human interpretation into LSMR without sacrificing the generality and scalability. In particular, we present three approaches to human-machine cooperation (cognitive, ontological, and adaptive), which are attributed to cognitive science, ontology engineering, and metacognition, respectively. We hope that this paper will create a bridge to enable researchers in different fields to communicate about the LSMR problem and lead to a ground-breaking next generation of LSMR systems

Exploring the usage of a video application tool: Experiences in film studies

This paper explores our experiences in deploying a video application tool in film studies, and its evaluation in terms of realistic contextual end-users who have real tasks to perform in a real environment. We demonstrate our experiences and core lesson learnt in deploying our novel movie browser application with undergraduate and graduate students completing a Film Studies course in Dublin City University over a semester. We developed a system called MOVIEBROWSER2 that has two types of browsing modes: Advanced and Basic. In general, students found that the features we provided were beneficial for their studies. Some issues or mismatches arose during the trial. A ‘wish-list’ was drawn up that might be useful for the future system developer. The contribution and achievements reported in this article are on the demonstration and exploration of how advances in technology can be deployed, and media can be accessed in the context of a real user community. Exploring the usage indicates a positive acceptance among students, besides lessons learned that are important for further investigation

Human-Machine Cooperation in Large-Scale Multimedia Retrieval: A Survey

Large-Scale Multimedia Retrieval(LSMR) is the task to fast analyze a large amount of multimedia data like images or videos and accurately find the ones relevant to a certain semantic meaning. Although LSMR has been investigated for more than two decades in the fields of multimedia processing and computer vision, a more interdisciplinary approach is necessary to develop an LSMR system that is really meaningful for humans. To this end, this paper aims to stimulate attention to the LSMR problem from diverse research fields. By explaining basic terminologies in LSMR, we first survey several representative methods in chronological order. This reveals that due to prioritizing the generality and scalability for large-scale data, recent methods interpret semantic meanings with a completely different mechanism from humans, though such humanlike mechanisms were used in classical heuristic-based methods. Based on this, we discuss human-machine cooperation, which incorporates knowledge about human interpretation into LSMR without sacrificing the generality and scalability. In particular, we present three approaches to human-machine cooperation (cognitive, ontological, and adaptive), which are attributed to cognitive science, ontology engineering, and metacognition, respectively. We hope that this paper will create a bridge to enable researchers in different fields to communicate about the LSMR problem and lead to a ground-breaking next generation of LSMR systems

ImageSpirit: Verbal Guided Image Parsing

Humans describe images in terms of nouns and adjectives while algorithms operate on images represented as sets of pixels. Bridging this gap between how humans would like to access images versus their typical representation is the goal of image parsing, which involves assigning object and attribute labels to pixel. In this paper we propose treating nouns as object labels and adjectives as visual attribute labels. This allows us to formulate the image parsing problem as one of jointly estimating per-pixel object and attribute labels from a set of training images. We propose an efficient (interactive time) solution. Using the extracted labels as handles, our system empowers a user to verbally refine the results. This enables hands-free parsing of an image into pixel-wise object/attribute labels that correspond to human semantics. Verbally selecting objects of interests enables a novel and natural interaction modality that can possibly be used to interact with new generation devices (e.g. smart phones, Google Glass, living room devices). We demonstrate our system on a large number of real-world images with varying complexity. To help understand the tradeoffs compared to traditional mouse based interactions, results are reported for both a large scale quantitative evaluation and a user study.Comment: http://mmcheng.net/imagespirit