Search Engine from Matfyz Wins Silver at VBS Competition
A team of computer science students from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics CUNI and the University of Konstanz, led by Assoc. Prof. Jakub Lokoč, secured second place in the Video Browser Showdown (VBS) competition. This traditional contest, which is part of the international MultiMedia Modeling conference, took place in early January in Nara, Japan.
This year, 17 teams from Europe and Asia participated in the VBS, a competition aimed at testing state-of-the-art systems for interactive video search. Among them was also a seven-member group consisting of Matfyz students and doctoral candidates from the University of Konstanz. As in the previous year, the event was held in a hybrid format—some participants competed on-site in Nara, Japan, while others joined remotely from their universities. Matfyz was represented in Japan by student Jakub Hajko.
The challenge required participants to search through vast video databases using their own tools to find specific scenes of up to 20 seconds, which were shown during the competition. “The search was conducted in three different collections—one containing videos downloaded from the internet, second consisting of underwater footages, and the third featuring recordings of laparoscopic surgeries. The most challenging searches typically involve medical data, as they contain a large number of visually similar scenes,” explains Assoc. Prof. Jakub Lokoč from the Department of Software Engineering at CUNI MFF, who has already led his students to four VBS victories in the past years.
Lokoč’s team introduced an enhanced version of the PraK software, which has been developed for two years in collaboration between Matfyz and the University of Konstanz. For this year’s competition, the researchers implemented a new model, they also accelerated the system and added several new features, including searching within sub-images. These improvements ultimately secured them a second place. “This is a great success, but more importantly, it's an excellent opportunity for students to gain real-world research experience early in their studies,” adds Assoc. Prof. Lokoč.