CinemaGazer: a System for Watching Videos at Very High Speed

This paper presents a technology that enables the watching of videos at very high speed. Subtitles are widely used in

DVD movies, and provide useful supplemental information for understanding video contents. We propose a "two-level fast-forwarding" scheme for videos with subtitles, which controls the speed of playback depending on the context: very fast during segments without language, such as subtitles or speech, and "understandably fast" during segments with such language. This makes it possible to

watch videos at a higher speed than usual and simultaneously understand the contents. We also propose "centering" and "fading" features for the display of subtitles to reduce fatigue when watching high-speed video. We implement a versatile video encoder that enables movie viewing with two-level fast-forwarding on any mobile device by specifying the speed of playback, the reading rate, or the overall viewing time. The effectiveness of our proposed method was demonstrated in an evaluation study.

This tool is now downloadable from here, but documents in English are not available. Stay tuned!

Example output 1: Superman in 240 seconds encoded by CinemaGazer [FOR BEGINNERS] (to 38.7% compression)

Need faster one? Here you are:

Example output 2: Superman in 120 seconds encoded by CinemaGazer [FOR EXPERTS] (to 19.3% compression)

Here is a technical detail.

Publications

• Kazutaka Kurihara, "CinemaGazer: a System for Watching Videos at Very High Speed," In Proceedings of AVI'12, pp.108-115, 2012. PDF
• Kazutaka Kurihara, "CinemaGazer: a System for Watching Video at Very High Speed," http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.0864, 2011.

© Kazutaka Kurihara