Visual-aural attention modeling for talk show video highlight detection

In this paper, we propose a visual-aural attention modeling based video content analysis approach, which can be used to automatically detect the highlights of the popular TV program - talk show video. First, the visual and aural affective features are extracted to represent and model the human attention of highlight. For efficiency consideration, the adopted affective features are kept as few as possible. Then, a specific fusion strategy called ordinal-decision is used to combine the visual, aural attention models and form the attention curve for a video. This curve can reflect the change of human attention while watching TV. Finally, highlight segments are located at the peaks of the attention curve. Moreover, sentence boundary detection is used to refine the highlight boundaries in order to keep the segments' integrality and fluency. This framework is extensible and flexible in integrating more affective features with a variety of fusion schemes. Experimental results demonstrate our proposed visual-aural attention analysis approach is effective for talk show video highlight detection. ?2008 IEEE.EI

"You Tube and I Find" - personalizing multimedia content access

Recent growth in broadband access and proliferation of small personal devices that capture images and videos has led to explosive growth of multimedia content available everywhereVfrom personal disks to the Web. While digital media capture and upload has become nearly universal with newer device technology, there is still a need for better tools and technologies to search large collections of multimedia data and to find and deliver the right content to a user according to her current needs and preferences. A renewed focus on the subjective dimension in the multimedia lifecycle, fromcreation, distribution, to delivery and consumption, is required to address this need beyond what is feasible today. Integration of the subjective aspects of the media itselfVits affective, perceptual, and physiological potential (both intended and achieved), together with those of the users themselves will allow for personalizing the content access, beyond today’s facility. This integration, transforming the traditional multimedia information retrieval (MIR) indexes to more effectively answer specific user needs, will allow a richer degree of personalization predicated on user intention and mode of interaction, relationship to the producer, content of the media, and their history and lifestyle. In this paper, we identify the challenges in achieving this integration, current approaches to interpreting content creation processes, to user modelling and profiling, and to personalized content selection, and we detail future directions. The structure of the paper is as follows: In Section I, we introduce the problem and present some definitions. In Section II, we present a review of the aspects of personalized content and current approaches for the same. Section III discusses the problem of obtaining metadata that is required for personalized media creation and present eMediate as a case study of an integrated media capture environment. Section IV presents the MAGIC system as a case study of capturing effective descriptive data and putting users first in distributed learning delivery. The aspects of modelling the user are presented as a case study in using user’s personality as a way to personalize summaries in Section V. Finally, Section VI concludes the paper with a discussion on the emerging challenges and the open problems

Tourism experiences in motion. Mobile, visual and psychophysiological methods to capture tourists “on the move”

Experience measurement and design have become leading management objectives to ensure destination competitiveness in recent years. This paper applies the user-centred perspective of mobile video ethnography with bio-sensing and facial action coding to study journey experiences – i.e. those tourist experiences happening in motion. The use of mobile, visual and psychophysiological methods represents a novel opportunity to deeper explore physical, sensory, social and emotional shades of tourist experiences. Experience measurement and design in the field of tourist transport has the potential to shape more sustainable and experientially rich forms of mobility. Results show and compare unique features of cycling and motorcycling journeys, highlighting the interface between riding and non-riding tasks, as well as the importance of speed variation and time duration in assessing the relationship with land- and soundscapes

Adaptive Piano Pedagogy for the Student with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

Music therapy is a well known means of creating emotional, academic and social advances in the life of children with autism. However, private instrumental instructions, a form of music therapy for this population, are not easily accessible. Not many piano teachers have the experience, background or understanding needed to teach students with varying degrees of challenges in sensory integration, information processing, aural and visual discrimination, motor problems and low muscle tone. The literature review in this thesis includes an overview of autistic spectrum disorder, the special learning needs of the child with autism, and general piano pedagogy theories, strategies and techniques, which pave the way for the adaptation of piano pedagogy for learners with ASD. The author concludes that the music therapist providing adapted piano instruction should emphasize teacher-student bonding, rhythm entrainment, improvisation, and visual and auditory discrimination skills. These areas are explored in greater depth and also demonstrated at various functioning levels through the introduction of three related case studies

A Systematic Review of Music Teacher Education Research within the United States:1982-2010

Music education researchers have explored several issues within music teacher education (MTE) including: coursework, teacher and musicianship skills, design and implementation of undergraduate programs, and music teacher identity development. An examination and discussion of this research will assist those responsible for educating future music teacher educators with developing meaningful and effective teacher training programs. In this systematic review, I examined the research published in peer-review journals between 1982 and 2010 and defended music education dissertations between 2005 and 2010. The purpose of the current synthesis was to synthesize peer-review research relating to MTE and to recount the findings and connections of existing research for current music teacher educators. Before studies were included in the synthesis, I reviewed each one to ensure they met the following inclusion criteria: (a) relevant to the proposed research questions under consideration; (b) published in a peer-review journal or a defended dissertation between 2005-2010; (c) printed in English; (d) published between 1982 and July 2010; (e) involved subjects who were members of an undergraduate teacher preparation program in the United States; (f) detailed in the presentation of the methodology; and (g) presented the content so that relevant information could be attained. To further explore the implications of the current synthesis' findings, three practicing music teacher educators completed a two-part questionnaire designed to elicit information about their perspectives of MTE research and opinions of the current findings. I reviewed, categorized, and reported responses from each questionnaire as part of the research synthesis intending to identify the role of research in MTE, commonalities, possible concerns, and possible future research needs for meaningful research agendas specific to music teacher education

Abstracts of the Second Urban Sound Symposium

Following the successful first Urban Sound Symposium held at Ghent University in 2019, the second edition in 2021 had to face the challenges of the pandemic. The symposium turned this challenge into an opportunity for giving easier access to practitioners and experts from around the globe who are confronted with urban sound in their professional activities. It was organized simultaneously in Ghent, Montreal, Nantes, Zurich, London and Berlin by researchers at Ghent University, Mc Gill University, Université Gustave Eiffel, EMPA, University College London and TU Berlin. The online event created opportunities for interaction between participants at poster-booths, virtual coffee tables, and included social activities

Music Teacher Knowledge: An Examination of the Intersections Between Instrumental Music Teaching and Conducting.

The purpose of this study was to examine the complexities of instrumental music teacher knowledge and explore how participants describe the intersections between instrumental music teaching and conducting. The key research question guiding this study was: How do high school instrumental music teachers describe the intersections between instrumental music teaching and conducting? Sub questions include (a) What key experiences do instrumental music teachers describe as being most meaningful to their development as teachers and conductors? (b) Which aspects of practice do instrumental music teachers perceive and describe as being related to the intersection between instrumental music teaching and their development as conductors, and (c) What dilemmas of practice do instrumental music teachers perceive and describe as being related to the intersection between instrumental music teaching and their development as conductors? This study focused on the participants’ (N = 4) perceptions and descriptions of the intersections between instrumental music teaching and conducting. A multiple case study design (Stake, 2006) was used to examine the commonalities and unique aspects across cases. Sources of data included: participant interviews, one participant focus group, one observation of each of the participants conducting and teaching their high school ensembles, and two stimulated recall events with each participant using previously recorded conducting footage. The central finding of this study suggests that the practice of instrumental music teaching demands a specialized form of knowledge that reflects the integration of, rather than the intersection between, both teaching and conducting. This specialized form of knowledge informs the participants’ in-the-moment decision-making, judgments, and communication with students and the ensemble as a whole. The dilemmas of practice related to instrumental music teaching and conducting include the participants’ ability to listen, assess, and respond to sound in the moment, and their ability to apply powerful lessons and experiences from mentor teachers and/or professional role models to their specific teaching context. The findings of this study suggest implications for music teacher education and conducting education, specifically in the areas of devising professional development opportunities that are systematic, multilevel, and multifaceted, and that mirror the integrated nature of teaching and conducting that occurs in practice.PhDMusic: Music EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111554/1/sommerb_1.pd

Hello There: An Integrative Framing Analysis of the Disney+ Series Obi-Wan Kenobi

The effective communication of emotions within audio-visual content, such as film, was one of the most important aspects that needed to be considered when creating such content. Within the field of communication, there was a limited amount of research that existed on the communication of emotions in film. This was a problem as such content is becoming more prevalent in society. Knowing how those emotions were created and developed would allow communication scholars to better understand how to effectively elicit emotions from their own audio-visual content. By examining a well-known series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, scholars could see how different aural and visual elements influenced the emotions found in a narrative. Most communication scholars would accomplish this using media framing theory, yet there are limitations with this theory. Therefore, by bringing integrative framing analysis to help fill the gaps, a more complete analysis of aural and visual frames can be accomplished. Throughout this study, aural and visual frames found within the series were integrated and analyzed together before conducting separate analyses for each kind of frame. In some cases, aural frames held more influence over the emotions being conveyed by a character and in others, visual frames held more influence. There were, however, some cases where the emotions conveyed had the most influence when both aural and visual frames were examined together

Finding the right note: the strategy use of eighth grade choral students during vocal sight-reading

Students’ strategy use is an assessment of their ability to assimilate, synthesize, and actualize knowledge shown to be directly related to success in sight-reading. The purpose of this exploratory, collective case study was to investigate the strategy use, and possible underlying cognitive music processes, of eighth grade middle school choral students when vocally sight-reading. More specifically, the objective of this research was to better understand the relationship between strategy use and accelerated learning in vocal music notation reading. To create a coalesced conceptual lens, I merged the construct of audiation and pertinent findings from cognitive science research, specifically music reading literature in cognitive psychology. Seeing students’ strategy use through this combined lens allowed me to concentrate on the role of cognitive processes (perception, attention, memory, audiation) in the vocal sight-reading process and begin to distill how participants’ strategies improved or reduced sight-reading performance. Fourteen eighth-grade middle school choral students participated (N = 14, 4 males, ages 13 to 14). Students participated in research activities individually, in one 30-minute session, in a nearby practice room at their middle school. I collected two types of quantitative data. First, I tallied scores from a sight-reading instrument, the Vocal Sight-Reading Inventory (Henry, 1999). Second, I categorized data from a researcher-designed Sophistication of Strategy Use Index (an accumulation of scores in five music cognition-based categories: looking behavior, chunking, long-term memory, auditory representations, and audiation). Furthermore, I gathered qualitative data through interviews, retrospective think-alouds (Ericsson & Simon, 1993), and video-stimulated recall interviews. All students employed strategies, both cognitive and non-cognitive, singularly and in combination. Three major findings emerged: 1. Students employed strategies in three domains of knowledge, visual-only (most frequent), aural-only (least frequent), and visual-aural, and two underlying systems, self-awareness and music vocabulary. 2. Those who scored in the highest 50% on the sight-reading indicator employed these strategies (two or three times) more frequently than those who scored in the lowest 50% • read in visual chunks and by analogy; • created and manipulated auditory representations; • paired singular pitches with discrete staff placement locations; • employed self-awareness in production and commission of errors; and • remained aurally grounded in the tonality. 3. There was a positive and strong correlation (r = .84, p < .00) between students’ sophistication of strategy use scores and vocal sight-reading scores. Results from the current study have implications for choral music educators in designing and implementing sight-reading curricula, especially with regards to content and pedagogy. Suggestions for sight-reading pedagogy include (a) scaffolding sight-reading instruction to guide sophisticated strategy use, (b) strengthening underlying musical cognitive processes, (c) emphasizing higher order relationships, especially chunking, and (d) increasing students’ meta-cognition surrounding vocal production and commission of errors