Matfyz Video Browser Excelled Again
A software tool designed for browsing in videos won the first two places in an international contest Video Browser Showdown (VBS) in Daejeon, South Korea.
Ten teams from all over the world including two Czech teams of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University participated in a competition which is annually a part of the International Conference on MultiMedia Modeling (MMM). The competitors have to use their own design of software tool to find a 20s scene in a 1000 hour-long-video. They can only watch a clip or read a short text task to manage it.
The first two places went to both Czech teams, SOMHunter of Miroslav Kratochvíl, Patrik Veselý, František Mejzlík and Jakub Lokoč, and VIRET of Gregor Kovalčík, Tomáš Souček and Jakub Lokoč who managed to pick up on success of the past years in keen competition. “Our student teams, which amongst others included undergraduate students, succeeded in competition with Ph.D. students from all over the world. It is a proof of a very good quality of our study programme as well as well prepared students,” commented the success the project leader Dr. Jakub Lokoč, who has been focused on research and technology of video browsing for several years.
The VIRET software won in the competition in Bangkok two years ago. Last year the contest took place in Thessaloniki, Greece and the Czech team VIRET ended the second after the team from Switzerland. SOMHunter has started their successful career this year in Korea. Both projects use the techniques of artificial intelligence.
“The development of similar systems greatly influences research in computer learning nowadays where it is necessary to choose, test and process the newest browsing models suitable for particular task constantly. Who does not update the models, fails, which we also experienced in the past,” Dr. Lokoč answered the question how the development has advanced throughout the time.
Although it is just basic research, the research team has finished a successful cooperation in a commercial field with a CISCO company. “We have now been preparing a new project in cooperation with a MEDIAN company,” added Dr. Lokoč.
The browser will be constantly improved so that Matfyz can successfully represent in the next year International Conference MMM again, this time in Prague.
