Creating a data collection for evaluating rich speech retrieval

We describe the development of a test collection for the investigation of speech retrieval beyond identification of relevant content. This collection focuses on satisfying user information needs for queries associated with specific types of speech acts. The collection is based on an archive of the Internet video from Internet video sharing platform (blip.tv), and was provided by the MediaEval benchmarking initiative. A crowdsourcing approach was used to identify segments in the video data which contain speech acts, to create a description of the video containing the act and to generate search queries designed to refind this speech act. We describe and reflect on our experiences with crowdsourcing this test collection using the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. We highlight the challenges of constructing this dataset, including the selection of the data source, design of the crowdsouring task and the specification of queries and relevant items

An introduction to crowdsourcing for language and multimedia technology research

Language and multimedia technology research often relies on large manually constructed datasets for training or evaluation of algorithms and systems. Constructing these datasets is often expensive with significant challenges in terms of recruitment of personnel to carry out the work. Crowdsourcing methods using scalable pools of workers available on-demand offers a flexible means of rapid low-cost construction of many of these datasets to support existing research requirements and potentially promote new research initiatives that would otherwise not be possible

Classification of dual language audio-visual content: Introduction to the VideoCLEF 2008 pilot benchmark evaluation task

VideoCLEF is a new track for the CLEF 2008 campaign. This track aims to develop and evaluate tasks in analyzing multilingual video content. A pilot of a Vid2RSS task involving assigning thematic class labels to video kicks off the VideoCLEF track in 2008. Task participants deliver classification results in the form of a series of feeds, one for each thematic class. The data for the task are dual language television documentaries. Dutch is the dominant language and English-language content (mostly interviews) is embedded. Participants are provided with speech recognition transcripts of the data in both Dutch and English, and also with metadata generated by archivists. In addition to the classification task, participants can choose to participate in a translation task (translating the feed into a language of their choice) and a keyframe selection task (choosing a semantically appropriate keyframe for depiction of the videos in the feed)

Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda

Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed

Multiple Retrieval Models and Regression Models for Prior Art Search

This paper presents the system called PATATRAS (PATent and Article Tracking, Retrieval and AnalysiS) realized for the IP track of CLEF 2009. Our approach presents three main characteristics: 1. The usage of multiple retrieval models (KL, Okapi) and term index definitions (lemma, phrase, concept) for the three languages considered in the present track (English, French, German) producing ten different sets of ranked results. 2. The merging of the different results based on multiple regression models using an additional validation set created from the patent collection. 3. The exploitation of patent metadata and of the citation structures for creating restricted initial working sets of patents and for producing a final re-ranking regression model. As we exploit specific metadata of the patent documents and the citation relations only at the creation of initial working sets and during the final post ranking step, our architecture remains generic and easy to extend

Indexing, browsing and searching of digital video

Video is a communications medium that normally brings together moving pictures with a synchronised audio track into a discrete piece or pieces of information. The size of a “piece ” of video can variously be referred to as a frame, a shot, a scene, a clip, a programme or an episode, and these are distinguished by their lengths and by their composition. We shall return to the definition of each of these in section 4 this chapter. In modern society, video is ver

Overview of VideoCLEF 2009: New perspectives on speech-based multimedia content enrichment

VideoCLEF 2009 offered three tasks related to enriching video content for improved multimedia access in a multilingual environment. For each task, video data (Dutch-language television, predominantly documentaries) accompanied by speech recognition transcripts were provided. The Subject Classification Task involved automatic tagging of videos with subject theme labels. The best performance was achieved by approaching subject tagging as an information retrieval task and using both speech recognition transcripts and archival metadata. Alternatively, classifiers were trained using either the training data provided or data collected from Wikipedia or via general Web search. The Affect Task involved detecting narrative peaks, defined as points where viewers perceive heightened dramatic tension. The task was carried out on the “Beeldenstorm” collection containing 45 short-form documentaries on the visual arts. The best runs exploited affective vocabulary and audience directed speech. Other approaches included using topic changes, elevated speaking pitch, increased speaking intensity and radical visual changes. The Linking Task, also called “Finding Related Resources Across Languages,” involved linking video to material on the same subject in a different language. Participants were provided with a list of multimedia anchors (short video segments) in the Dutch-language “Beeldenstorm” collection and were expected to return target pages drawn from English-language Wikipedia. The best performing methods used the transcript of the speech spoken during the multimedia anchor to build a query to search an index of the Dutch language Wikipedia. The Dutch Wikipedia pages returned were used to identify related English pages. Participants also experimented with pseudo-relevance feedback, query translation and methods that targeted proper names

Spoken content retrieval: A survey of techniques and technologies

Speech media, that is, digital audio and video containing spoken content, has blossomed in recent years. Large collections are accruing on the Internet as well as in private and enterprise settings. This growth has motivated extensive research on techniques and technologies that facilitate reliable indexing and retrieval. Spoken content retrieval (SCR) requires the combination of audio and speech processing technologies with methods from information retrieval (IR). SCR research initially investigated planned speech structured in document-like units, but has subsequently shifted focus to more informal spoken content produced spontaneously, outside of the studio and in conversational settings. This survey provides an overview of the field of SCR encompassing component technologies, the relationship of SCR to text IR and automatic speech recognition and user interaction issues. It is aimed at researchers with backgrounds in speech technology or IR who are seeking deeper insight on how these fields are integrated to support research and development, thus addressing the core challenges of SCR