Special Sessions
QOMEX 2016 features a number of high quality special sessions that aim to cover specific technical and scientific advances in QoE-related fields of interest. Special sessions will be intermixed with regular sessions during the conference. Each special session will be one hour and forty minutes long, typically consisting of 5 oral presentations. The following rules apply:
- Each SS is expected to have at most 5 papers each.
- Everybody may submit to a SS (and not only those authors included in the SS proposal).
- SS submitted papers will undergo the same rigorous reviewing process by anonymous and independent reviewers as regular papers.
- Since this is a small workshop, the SS submitted papers will be reviewed together with the regular papers, this means the reviewing is managed by the QoMEX TPC.
- If after the reviewing process less than 3 papers submitted to a special session are selected, the special session will be cancelled and the papers that passed the review process will be presented within the main technical track of the workshop.
- Accepted special sessions may be supplemented by papers selected from the general pool depending on the reviews of the papers originally proposed for the session.
List of Accepted Special Sessions
Special Session - Visual Perception Modeling for Image/Video Compression.
Organizers: Jinjian Wu, Weisi Lin and Guangming Shi
More information
Rationale of the motivation and objective of the special session
Visual perception modeling is important on testing, optimizing, monitoring and inspecting related perceptual-oriented signal processing systems. Moreover, perceptual-oriented signal processing technique plays an important role in the design of the signal compression and communication algorithms and systems. Since humans are the ultimate consumers of the majority of processed visual signals, and as a result of evolution, human possesses unique physiological and psychological mechanisms in the representation and processing of visual signal. It would be beneficial to design relevant image/video compression systems with the guidance of visual perception.
Session outline
This special session invites original submissions that represent the latest technology development for visual perception modeling, perceptual based image/video compression, as well as innovative applications and system integrations in any aspect of visual signal processing.
Topics of interest of this special session include, but are not limited to:
- Visual perception modeling.
- Perceptual-oriented video/image compression.
- Just noticeable different estimation.
- Image/Video quality assessment.
- Research related to visual structure extraction, scalability and robustness.
- New psychophysical experiments on the visibility of the human visual system.
- Related applications, databases and standardization.
Contact information for the special session organizers:
- Jinjian Wu, Xidian University, China.
- Weisi Lin, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
- Guangming Shi, Xidian University, China.
Special Session - User Factors in Multimedia Experiences.
Organizers: Judith Redi, Weisi Lin and George Ghinea
More information
Rationale of the motivation and objective of the special session
Delivering an excellent experience to the user is the holy grail for many researchers in multimedia technology. This implies producing, retrieving, transmitting, delivering and finally visualizing the right media material in the right way, i.e., a way that fulfils (or better, exceeds) the user expectations. Certainly, the characteristics of the multimedia system that delivers the experience, and the context in which the experience is delivered impact on its appreciation and endurability. But multimedia experiences are also individual, and user factors such as personal preferences and interest, cultural and social background, personality, gender, age, as well as physiological characteristics are crucial in determining one’s appreciation for the multimedia system or service. Traditionally, multimedia experiences have been optimized for the “average user”, and their quality measured through Mean Opinion Scores. User factors have been partially neglected, due to the inherent difficulty in dealing with individual differences and in measuring (unobtrusively) individual characteristics. Modern technologies like wearable sensors and social media offer now system designers the opportunity to know more about their users and their characteristics. This opens the door to many possibilities to improve the quality of multimedia experiences, and eventually to target personalized multimedia optimization and delivery. To achieve this, studies are necessary to (1) better understand the impact of user factors on multimedia experience appreciation, (2) investigate techniques for collecting data (e.g. through wearable and social sensing) about a specific user preferences and characteristics, and (3) deploy methods for integrating user information (e.g. via user modeling) in multimedia system optimization.
The special session on User Factors in Multimedia Experiences at QoMEX 2016 will aim at soliciting and collecting these efforts, towards designing a roadmap for future investigations on user factors in multimedia experiences. It will target contributions (and attendees) from the Quality of Multimedia Experiences community, but also from neighboring fields such as Media Psychology, Human Computer Interaction and User Modeling, with which we aim at building strong bridges for future collaboration.
Outline of the session and topics of interest
The session will aim at understanding and capturing individual differences in multimedia experience preferences. Relevant accepted papers will aim at answering questions such as “which impact do user characteristics have on Quality of Experience?” and “How can these characteristics be captured, and their influence on (quality of) multimedia experiences modeled?”. Subjective studies, field trials, as well as theoretical models of users and experience appreciation will be welcomed as contributions. Specifically, we will call for papers addressing the following topics:
- Influence of individual traits (personality, gender, culture, socioeconomical background ), personal preferences and interests on multimedia experiences.
- Media psychology.
- Integration of user information in QoE objective metrics.
- Optimization of (quality of) multimedia experiences in a personalized way.
- Gendered innovation approaches to multimedia experiences.
- User modeling for personalization of multimedia experiences.
- Wearable sensing for personal multimedia experience assessment.
- Personalized storytelling in media.
- Demographics of multimedia consumers.
- Ethnographic studies on multimedia experiences.
- Relationship between affective states and multimedia perception and experiences.
Contact information for the special session organizers:
- Judith Redi, Intelligent Systems, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
- Weisi Lin, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
- George Ghinea, Department of Computer Science, Brunel University Uxbridge, United Kingdom.
Special Session - Sound Quality and Audio Quality of Experience.
Organizer: Bruno Fazenda
More information
Rationale of the motivation and objective of the special session
This special session on Sound Quality and Audio Quality of Experience aims to bring together latest scientific advances on a wide range of topics related to sound quality assessment, such as those found in: music recording and production; user generated content recording; metrics and automated evaluation; listening tests and perceptual evaluation of spatial audio reproduction equipment and environments.
The topics of interest of this special session focuses on aspects of Sound quality in:
- Music recording and production techniques.
- User generated content recording.
- Evaluation of audio reproduction equipment and reproduction environments, particularly spatial audio.
It further covers aspects related to:
- Metrics and automated evaluation.
- Listening test design.
- Perceptual evaluation methodologies.
Contact information for the special session organizer:
- Bruno Fazenda, School of Computing, Science and Engineering Acoustics Research Centre, University of Salford, Salford, U.K.
The following special sessions were submitted:
- Special Session 1 - Visual Perception Modeling for Image/Video Compression.
- Special Session 2 - Current Issues in Quality of Experience of Spatial Audio Reproduction in Media Consumption and Communication Systems.
- Special Session 3 - User Factors in Multimedia Experiences.
- Special Session 4 - The Return to the Dark Side of the Moon: Lessons Learned from Unexpected Experimental Outcomes.
- Special Session 5 - Sound Quality and Audio Quality of Experience.