Technology Enables Customizing TV Shows and Catching Up On Series
By David Tobia
November 19, 2012
November 19, 2012
- StoryVisualizer (or StoViz), a new PC-based technology, can reconfigure video sequences around specific characters to create a “personalized video episode” based on a specific character, writes New Scientist.
- StoViz uses image analysis to isolate actors’ faces and the backgrounds in certain scenes. The technology also analyzes audio to find key words that help compile similar scenes and stories.
- “The software then assembles a group of scenes that its video and audio algorithms have decided are semantically similar, and therefore hopefully represents the same plot line,” explains the article.
- Hervé Bredin of the Computer Sciences Laboratory for Mechanics and Engineering Sciences in Orsay, France has been working with a team at the Toulouse Institute for Computer Science Research to develop the technology. The team has tested StoViz on TV series with different formats: “Malcolm in the Middle,” “Game of Thrones” and “Ally McBeal.”
- “The system could easily be activated via a screen menu, says Bredin, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future you might simply say the name of your favorite character to a Siri-like voice interface,” suggests the article.
- The technology could be useful for people who need to catch up on a series or wish to understand the backstory behind a character. But some question if the technology is actually useful.
- “I frankly wonder about the character of a viewer who would wish to use this when up to date with a series,” says Simon Parnall of pay TV systems maker NDS.
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