is the biggest annual event for the publication and promotion of the work that we do at ±«Óãtv R&D.
Back in December last year I ran a series of user tests for a piece of research on the relationship between the impact of errors and delay on the perceived quality of subtitles. Just before we ran the tests we made the decision to publish the results externally, and because the results would be of interest to many in the broadcast industry, I decided I would aim to present the results at IBC. My proposal for a paper was accepted back in March and at the same time we started to plan our participation in a ±«Óãtv R&D stand. The full paper was finally accepted for publication in June.
My paper, "" was one of three papers in the session "". This was the first time a whole session at the IBC conference has been devoted entirely to the subject of access services, and showed a growing interest in the subject, particularly subtitles.
Photo: Matt Shotton looks on as Matt Brooks makes improvements to his demo.
The first, by , was a demonstration of how subtitles which have been produced on a live programme, running 4-8 seconds behind the speech, can be automatically realigned and reformatted to create two-line block subtitles which appear on the first word. It is a proof-of-concept designed to show how we may be able to improve subtitle quality for video delivered over IP some time after broadcast. You can read more about it in his white paper, "".
The second demo was an illustration of the results has been getting from experiments aiming to place subtitles in ways which are better for the viewer. The demonstration visualised the gaze-position data from a set of experiments comparing people's eye movements for subtitles placed close to the object of interest with ones placed in the normal position. These rather colourful visualisations were both informative and eye-catching.
Our stand attracted a great deal of interest. Our demo was included in the first "" session which, alongside the paper session created significant interest in our stand.
We were on our feet talking to visitors for almost the entire conference.
Our visit to IBC was incredibly successful. It was very hard work but well worth the effort. There was a huge level of interest and we gained many new contacts and several offers of help in our work from others in the industry.