Video Showcase

Quick Facts

• Important Dates:
  • Submission deadline: 13 January 2016 (12:00pm noon PST).
  • Notification deadline: 2 February 2016.
  • Publication-ready deadline: 9 February 2016.
• Submission Details:
  • Online Submission: PCS Submission System.
  • Template: Extended Abstracts Format.
  • Submission Format: one page description in Extended Abstract Format.
  • Video Submission Format: H.264 encoded MP4, at least 1280px x 720px, at most 5 minutes (2-3 minutes is a more common length).
  • Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
• Selection process: Curated.
• Chairs: Kurt Luther, Rodrigo de Oliveira, Catherine Letondal, Hyun Jean Lee, Jude Yew Choon Loong and Jaz Hee-Jeong Choi (videoshowcase@chi2016.acm.org).
• At the Conference: All accepted videos will be shown during a special session, and we will announce the nominees and winner(s) of the Golden Mouse award.
• Archives: Extended Abstracts; ACM Digital Library.

Message from the Videos Chairs

The videos showcase is a forum for human-computer interaction that leaps off the page: vision videos, reflective pieces, humor, novel interfaces, studies, and anything else that is a good match for video and relevant to HCI. Your work will be screened by a large CHI audience during a special session at CHI 2016, and will be considered for the Golden Mouse award. Because of the large audience the video showcase attracts, it is one of the best means for getting your message out to the CHI community. Videos will be available in the ACM Digital Library after the conference.

Work will be judged on how much it intellectually engages an HCI audience and how effectively it communicates its message. Ultimately, we are looking to put together an enjoyable show for the attendees. Interesting but poorly-produced videos will be rejected – but if it’s YouTube-ready per se, it should be ready for the videos track!

Authors can submit videos of any length up to 5 minutes. Videos will be accepted in two categories: Full Videos and Short Videos. Full Videos will be given featured status at the event, will be considered for awards, and will be shown in their entirety. Short Video authors will be required to shorten their submissions to a maximum of 75 seconds to be shown at the event.

Videos will be accepted conditionally. The chairs may ask you to shorten your video further, to improve edits, or otherwise to prepare it for public consumption. You will be given a short period of time to revise your video and re-submit a final version for approval and screening at the conference.

Kurt Luther, Virginia Tech
Rodrigo de Oliveira, Google (YouTube)
Catherine Letondal – ENAC, France
Hyun Jean Lee – Yonsei University, Seoul
Jude Yew Choon Loong – University of Singapore, Singapore
Jaz Hee-Jeong Choi – Queensland University of Technology, Australia
videoshowcase@chi2016.acm.org

Preparing and Submitting your Video Showcase Submission

A Video Showcase submission must be submitted via the PCS Submission System by 13 January 2016, 12:00pm noon PST. The proposal must have the following three components:

1. Extended Abstract. A one-page description of your video submission submitted in the Conference Extended Abstracts Format.
2. Video Submission. Your video must adhere to the following guidelines:
   • At most five minutes in length, noting that 2-3 minutes is a more common length. Contact the Videos chairs at least 12 hours before the submission deadline if you have good reason to request special exemption for the length limit.
   • Titles and credits totaling no more than ten seconds: showcase your content!
   • Encoded as an MP4 using the H.264 codec. No exceptions!
   • Resolution of at least 1280px x 720px. Send as high a resolution copy of your video as possible.
   • We strongly recommend 16:9 aspect ratio. Encode your video using square pixels for the pixel aspect ratio to avoid your movie looking stretched when projected.
   • At most 100 MB in file size (the system allows us to make a small number of exceptions to this rule, but please contact the Videos chairs in advance).
3. Caption File. To make the Video Showcase more accessible, we are requiring all submissions this year to be captioned, either in .srt or .sbv format. There are several free, easy ways to caption your videos. We recommend uploading your video to YouTube and use the provided captioning tools; You can keep the video private or unlisted and delete it immediately after. You have the choice to manually create all captions, or let YouTube automatically generate captions and manually correct them. Afterwards, you can download the .sbv file. A step-by-step tutorial is available here.

Most video editing software provides an exporting option to MP4/H.264, for example iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and Final Cut Pro. If you prefer to use free software, x264 can encode any video into H.264.

Copyright and third-party material

It is very important that you have the rights to use all the material that is contained in your submission, including music, video, images, etc. Obtaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference. You are encouraged to use Creative Commons content, for example music available at ccMixter or Newgrounds. If you need to use copyrighted protected work, you are required to review and comply to ACM’s Copyright and Permission Policy and ACM’s Requirements about 3rd party material. In addition, YouTube’s copyright education website provides useful information on reusing 3rd party material.

Videos may show work that has been published or released previously. Please make clear in your submission any prior exposure your video has received. If you no longer hold the copyright, you must secure permission from the copyright holder as described above prior to submission.

Authors of accepted submissions must sign a copyright form allowing us (ACM and SIGCHI) to upload your video into the ACM Digital Library. We may also request permission to share your video on YouTube or equivalent video-sharing sites and through social media to promote the CHI conference. As with standard procedures for other ACM publications, authors retain copyright of the material but accepted submissions will only be published or shown at the conference with a signed form permitting ACM to use the content.

Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions should NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference, with the exception of title and author information which will be published on the website prior to the conference.

Video Showcase Selection Process

Videos will be curated by a small group of curators, including the Video Showcase Chairs, according to two main criteria:

• Content: Is the material interesting to human-computer interaction researchers and professionals? The topic of the video is ultimately up to the authors, but some approaches that have worked well in the past include the following: presentations of research systems, visions of the future, humorous parodies or thoughtful critiques of SIGCHI and HCI, and reports on ethnographic work and user studies. A video’s content evaluation depends on how directly it addresses issues of relevance to HCI, and whether its message is interesting and engaging.
• Presentation: Is the video edited well? Does it make appropriate use of pacing, music, and special effects? Does it drag on, or will it hold an audience’s attention? Because the video showcase is a live screening, we strongly encourage creative editing of your videos. The tight time limit is imposed to keep videos short and punchy. In addition to effective pacing, your video should include appropriate music or soundtrack. Your idea may be brilliant, but if you can’t convey it in an engaging way, it will not make a good live video piece.

Example Videos

New this year, we are providing a set of “concept videos” with annotations by David Green (http://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/people/ndpg). These four videos are successful Video Showcase submissions from prior years supplemented by split-screen commentary on effective filmmaking and storytelling techniques. These examples range from system-focused projects to design studies, and we hope they inspire and educate. Consider them from the point of view of production: their length, lighting, pacing, use of media assets (video, images, sound, and text), spatial and temporal compositing, and above all how these production and editing choices are used to tell a story to the CHI audience.

TRANSFORM (CHI 2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwr1YtLtea0

Hello World (CHI 2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yddVqLsWHAU

Personhood (CHI 2013)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpItmePrNmI

SandCanvas (CHI 2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E51RU-ZJy0

In addition, the following videos have won awards in previous years. Along with the videos above, we encourage you to use them as models for your own work.

IllumiRoom: CHI2013 Golden Mouse Award
http://brettrjones.com/illumiroom/

Gest: CHI 2010 Best Concept Video
http://youtu.be/WHQywuvVJmk

CHIStory: CHI 2009 Most Entertaining Video
http://youtu.be/Q3cT-x4yR6U

Upon Acceptance of your Video

Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 2 February 2016. Authors of accepted videos will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit the publication-ready video and Extended Abstract. These will be due on 9 February 2016.

Videos will be accepted conditionally. The chairs may ask authors to shorten their videos further, to improve edits, or otherwise to prepare it for public consumption. The authors will be given a week to revise your video and re-submit a final version for approval and screening at the conference.

At the Conference

Your work will be screened in a theater-style setting in front of a large CHI audience during a special session at CHI 2016. The Golden Mouse Award winner will be announced at the end of the session.

After the Conference

Accepted videos will be available in the ACM Digital Library. One-page descriptions of the videos will be also be distributed in the CHI Extended Abstracts, available in the ACM Digital Library.