MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization

This book provides an approachable overview of the most recent advances in the fascinating field of media synchronization (mediasync), gathering contributions from the most representative and influential experts. Understanding the challenges of this field in the current multi-sensory, multi-device, and multi-protocol world is not an easy task. The book revisits the foundations of mediasync, including theoretical frameworks and models, highlights ongoing research efforts, like hybrid broadband broadcast (HBB) delivery and users' perception modeling (i.e., Quality of Experience or QoE), and paves the way for the future (e.g., towards the deployment of multi-sensory and ultra-realistic experiences). Although many advances around mediasync have been devised and deployed, this area of research is getting renewed attention to overcome remaining challenges in the next-generation (heterogeneous and ubiquitous) media ecosystem. Given the significant advances in this research area, its current relevance and the multiple disciplines it involves, the availability of a reference book on mediasync becomes necessary. This book fills the gap in this context. In particular, it addresses key aspects and reviews the most relevant contributions within the mediasync research space, from different perspectives. Mediasync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization is the perfect companion for scholars and practitioners that want to acquire strong knowledge about this research area, and also approach the challenges behind ensuring the best mediated experiences, by providing the adequate synchronization between the media elements that constitute these experiences

Demonstrating Immersive Media Delivery on 5G Broadcast and Multicast Testing Networks

This work presents eight demonstrators and one showcase developed within the 5G-Xcast project. They experimentally demonstrate and validate key technical enablers for the future of media delivery, associated with multicast and broadcast communication capabilities in 5th Generation (5G). In 5G-Xcast, three existing testbeds: IRT in Munich (Germany), 5GIC in Surrey (UK), and TUAS in Turku (Finland), have been developed into 5G broadcast and multicast testing networks, which enables us to demonstrate our vision of a converged 5G infrastructure with fixed and mobile accesses and terrestrial broadcast, delivering immersive audio-visual media content. Built upon the improved testing networks, the demonstrators and showcase developed in 5G-Xcast show the impact of the technology developed in the project. Our demonstrations predominantly cover use cases belonging to two verticals: Media & Entertainment and Public Warning, which are future 5G scenarios relevant to multicast and broadcast delivery. In this paper, we present the development of these demonstrators, the showcase, and the testbeds. We also provide key findings from the experiments and demonstrations, which not only validate the technical solutions developed in the project, but also illustrate the potential technical impact of these solutions for broadcasters, content providers, operators, and other industries interested in the future immersive media delivery.Comment: 16 pages, 22 figures, IEEE Trans. Broadcastin

Älytelevision hybridisovellukset : Mahdollisuudet ja haasteet

Tässä kirjallisuuskatsauksessa esitellään keskeinen älytelevision hybridisovelluksiin liittyvä tekniikka ja tunnistetaan älytelevision hybridisovellusten tarjoamia mahdollisuuksia ja hybridisovelluksiin liittyviä haasteita. Aihe on suurtakin yleisöä kiinnostava, sillä älytelevisioiden hybridisovellukset voisivat viedä televisionkatselun aivan uudelle tasolle. Hybridisovellukset ovat kuitenkin vielä useille television käyttäjille tuntemattomia, ja niistä kertova tieto on vaikeaselkoista. Aiheesta on myös melko vähän tieteellistä tutkimusta ja lähdekirjallisuutta. Tutkielmassa etsitään vastausta tutkimuskysymykseen minkälaisia mahdollisuuksia älytelevision hybridisovellukset tarjoavat ja minkälaisia haasteita niihin liittyy? Samalla tämä tutkielma jalostaa lähdekirjallisuuden pohjalta kootun tiedon kansantajuiseksi johdannoksi älytelevision hybridisovellusten maailmaan. Älytelevision hybridisovellus on ominaisuus, jossa digitaalitelevisiolähetykseen yhdistetään internetyhteydellä lisäominaisuuksia. Älytelevision hybridisovellukset mahdollistavat ohjelmasuositusten tarjoamisen, televisiolähetyssisällön ominaisuuksien räätälöinnin katsojakohtaisesti ja voivat lisätä yhteenkuuluvuuden tunnetta katsojan voidessa olla vuorovaikutuksessa muiden katsojien tai ohjelmantarjoajan kanssa. Ne mahdollistavat myös televisiomainonnan uusilla tavoilla, joista keskeisin on mainonnan kohdentaminen. Hybridisovelluksena voi toteuttaa esimerkiksi mahdollisuuden osallistua televisio-ohjelmaan kotisohvalta tai mahdollisuuden seurata urheilulähetystä vain haluamastaan kuvakulmasta. Älytelevision hybridisovellukset perustuvat kaksisuuntaiseen yhteyteen ohjelmaa lähettävän tahon ja vastaanottavan tahon eli älytelevision välillä. Hybridiominaisuuksiin liittyy tiiviisti erilaisia standardeja, joista keskeisin on HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV). Älytelevision hybridisovelluksiin liittyy myös haasteita. Koska hybridisovellus yhdistää sisältöä eri jakeluteiltä, sisältöjen synkronointi on tärkeää. Muita hybridisovelluksiin liittyviä haasteita ovat hybridisovellusten vaatimus laajakaistayhteydelle, päätelaitteiden suorituskykyvaihtelu ja kova kilpailu ihmisten ajasta muiden viihdykkeiden kuten suoratoistopalveluiden kanssa

Deliverable D8.6 Market and Product Survey for LinkedTV Services and Technology

This deliverable D8.6 gives an update to D8.2 - First Market Analysis, which provided an initial market analysis focusing on the overall TV industry. D8.6 presents the results of the market analysis for LinkedTV products and services and consists of two parts: an overall analysis of current and future developments in the TV and digital video market and a specific market analysis of potential LinkedTV customers and competitors. Based on the market analysis it was possible to provide a first rough estimation of the LinkedTV market potential and to position LinkedTV on the market

Deliverable D5.1 LinkedTV Platform and Architecture

The objective of Linked TV is the integration of hyperlinks in videos to open up new possibilities for an interactive, seamless usage of video on the Web. LinkedTV provides a platform for the automatic identification of media fragments, their metadata annotations and connection with the Linked Open Data Cloud, which enables to develop applications for the search for objects, persons or events in videos and retrieval of more detailed related information. The objective of D5.1 is the design of the platform architecture for the server and client side based on the requirements derived from the scenarios defined in WP6 and technical needs from WPs 1-4. The document defines workflows, components, data structures and tools. Flexible interfaces and an efficient communications infrastructure allow for a seamless deployment of the system in heterogeneous, distributed environments. The resulting design builds the basis for the distributed development of all components in WP1-4 and their integration into a platform enabling for the efficient development of Hypervideo applications

Deliverable D9.3 Final Project Report

This document comprises the final report of LinkedTV. It includes a publishable summary, a plan for use and dissemination of foreground and a report covering the wider societal implications of the project in the form of a questionnaire

Speech technologies for the audiovisual and multimedia interaction environments

361 p

Second Screen Applications: A Multi-Platform Software Development Kit and Optimization of Human-Computer Interaction in Distributed Systems

This dissertation addresses various aspects of the term second screen and the challenges involved in the development of this type of application. The term and its characteristics have been clearly delineate by the means of a structured review of literature of 65 publications and an analysis of 19 currently available commercial applications. Furthermore, a content and technical classification were created to facilitate communication and the positing of future research activity in this area. The development of second screen applications is currently associated with a high effort, caused by the redundant implementation of multiple software platforms on both first and second screen side. In order to counteract this double multi-platform problem, an SDK was developed that facilitates the connection and communication process between the different application parts. The functionality of this 2ndS SDK was evaluated as reliable and performant and proven in several functional prototypes, which also served the purpose to examine existing and new forms of second screen interaction. In addition to addressing the technical challenges involved in the development of second screen applications, this work presents several results regarding the optimization of human-computer interaction in this type of application. These include a collection of 55 application components raised and validated in a mixed-method approach and insights into the attention behavior in such scenarios with corresponding recommendations derived from two eye-tracking studies. Furthermore, were concrete design guidelines from existing sources abstracted and evaluated with the help of a user study, and heuristics derived for the domain second screen and extended to a checklist for the efficient identification of problems. The results presented in this work are intended to be used in a usercentered design process and aim to ease the development of second screen applications with optimized interaction, and thereby contribute to their awareness and further distribution

Structured film-viewing preferences and practices : a quantitative analysis of hierarchies in screen and content selection amongst young people in Flanders

Aleit Veenstra, Philippe Meers and Daniel Biltereyst address a specific segment of a typical small-market audience—Flemish youth film viewers. Their study “Structured Film Viewing Preferences and Practices: A Quantitative Analysis of Hierarchies in Screen and Content Selection among Young People in Flanders” deals with one of the symptomatic problems of the era of convergent audiences, the multiplication of screens used for domestic consumption of audiovisual content. Building an intriguing empirical design, Veenstra and her colleagues aim to identify patterns of screen selection and their relation to the perceived value of Hollywood, European and domestic Flemish films. Their conclusion is that there are well-articulated hierarchies applied by the audience members in the selection of both film titles and reception screens and that, to put it simply, in the case of screens, size matters