Snap-changes

Interactive Storytelling, 2018

Electronic Imaging

2018

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on 360◦ video storytelling. It describes the 'Virtual Director' concept, an enabling technology that was developed to personalize video presentation in applications where multiple live streams are available at the same time. Users are supported in dynamically changing viewpoints, as the Virtual Director essentially auto- mates the tasks of a human director. As research prototypes on a proof-of-concept maturity level, this approach has been evaluated for personalized live event broadcast, group video communication and distributed theatre performances. While on the capture side a 180◦ high-resolution panoramic video feed has been used in one of these application scenarios, so far, only traditional 2D video screen were investigated for playout. The research question this paper aims to contribute to is how technology in general, and an adaptation of the Virtual Direc- tor concept in particular, could assist users in their needs whe...

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2021

2017 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR)

IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 2021

Interactive Storytelling, 2018

Interest in the development of virtual and augmented reality (VR) has surged in the last decade. Recent advancements in this technology have created a market for fully-immersive VR that becomes more accessible and less expensive with each yearly iteration. The profound immersion offered by these systems is unparalleled by any preceding technology. Although the first industry to meaningfully utilize VR was video games, filmmakers are beginning to take advantage of the new avenues opened up by limitless visuals, lifelike audio, and haptic feedback. While still in the early stages of development, VR in cinema has the opportunity to significantly impact visual storytelling. This research aims to investigate the ways in which cinema could become a fully-immersive medium. By surveying the current literature and reviewing interviews with industry experts, this paper will hypothesize about the potential ways in which VR will impact cinematic production and storytelling methods. Throughout this research, we will analyze current and upcoming projects in VR as the benchmark of our analysis. Using VR as a tool for narrative filmmaking proposes new challenges. VR filmmakers will now face audience distraction, the direction of attention, and the proper utilization of plot in an immersive world. In order to achieve a cohesive experience, films may have to closely replicate life events. Classic film techniques, such as frequent jump-cuts, would jar VR audiences. Based on these and other challenges discussed in the paper, we will offer hypotheses about the impact of VR on cinema as well as practical suggestions for those interested in utilizing this new technology as a medium for passive storytelling. Keywords: Virtual Reality, VR Storytelling, Immersion, 360 Video, Immersive cinema

in Proc. of ACM International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV’17), 2017

We study the problem of predicting the Field-of-Views (FoVs) of viewers watching 360° videos using commodity Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs). Existing solutions either use the viewer's current orientation to approximate the FoVs in the future, or extrapolate future FoVs using the historical orientations and dead-reckoning algorithms. In this paper, we develop xation prediction networks that concurrently leverage sensor-and content-related features to predict the viewer xation in the future, which is quite diierent from the solutions in the literature. e sensor-related features include HMD orientations, while the content-related features include image saliency maps and motion maps. We build a 360° video streaming testbed to HMDs, and recruit twenty-ve viewers to watch ten 360° videos. We then train and validate two design alternatives of our proposed networks, which allows us to identify the beer-performing design with the optimal parameter seings. Trace-driven simulation results show the merits of our proposed xation prediction networks compared to the existing solutions, including: (i) lower consumed bandwidth, (ii) shorter initial buuer-ing time, and (iii) short running time.

2016

An emergence of applications based on live audio-visual content streams could be observed in recent years. While the technological infrastructure in terms of bandwidth and device capabilities has advanced, media formats and related consumption paradigms have not changed as fundamentally. Meanwhile, a considerable amount of research has addressed automatic personalization of multimedia content for the sake of enabling immersive multimedia experiences, however, mostly considering pre-recorded and not live content. This paper states the case for more research to be conducted on what we refer to as Virtual Director technology as one key enabling technology for the hyper-personalization of live content delivery. A Virtual Director is software that automatically selects, frames, mixes and cuts from a number of AV content streams. It aims to automate the complex and challenging tasks that a broadcast director and team undertake during a live event broadcast. Virtual Director software can b...