QoMEX 2013

The fifth international workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) will bring together leading professionals and scientists interested in evaluating multimedia quality and user experience. QoMEX is the flagship workshop of the European COST action Qualinet, which serves as its technical and financial sponsor. After San Diego (2009), Trondheim (2010), Mechelen (2011), and Yarra Valley (2012), QoMEX 2013 will be held in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria.

This years’ edition of QoMEX will come up with the following highlights [PDF]:

Keynotes/Plenary Talks

• Simon Schütte – Kansei Engineering: How to design emotional experiences into products and services
• Aljoša Smolić – 3D Video Processing, Perception, and Quality – A Content Creator’s Perspective
• Peter Purgathofer – The many perspectives of Quality of Experience

List of Accepted Papers

• Full papers, short papers, demo papers

Special Sessions

• Experiencing Immersive Audio (Organizers: Karlheinz Brandenburg, Kristina Kunze, and Stephan Werner)
• QoE for Web and Cloud Applications (Organizers: Tobias Hossfeld and Lea Skorin-Kapov)
• Affect and Physiology in QoE Research (Organizers: Katrien De Moor, Robert Schleicher, and Jan-Niklas Antons)

QUALINET Industry Forum Expo

• Thomas Richter on High Dynamic Range (HDR)
• Industry exhibition and demo paper presentation

Social Events

• Welcome reception at Seepark Hotel
• Social dinner at Werzer’s Hotel Resort in Pörtschach incl. boat trip

Registration

• The online registration for the workshop is available here.
• The early-bird registration discount rates apply if you register before May 17th, 2013!

Additionally, you might be looking for more information about the venue, accommodation, and transport. For those who plan to stay at the workshop venue, the Seepark Hotel, please make sure to complete your booking before May 22, 2013 in order to get the prices listed here.

The online registration for the workshop is available here. The early-bird registration discount rates apply if you register before May 17th, 2013!

Additionally, you might be looking for more information about the venue, accommodation, transport, and social events. For those who plan to stay at the workshop venue, the Seepark Hotel, please make sure to complete your booking before May 22, 2013 in order to get the prices listed here.

Simon Schütte holds an associated Professor position in the area of product development. In 2000 he finished his undergraduate education as a mechanical Engineering with specialisation in material handling at the University in Braunschweig Germany. In 2005 he received his Ph.D degree in the area of Human-Systems Engineering and continued as a postdoctoral fellow in the same area. The topic of his research was mainly Kansei Engineering and affective aspects in product development. His special interest is the definition of “driver feeling”, quality feeling, and subjective customer experience in technical terms. In 2008 he moved to the division of machine design where he close to the Concept Realisation Lab (CRL) continued his research with product development methods and in particular affective aspects in product development.

The Qualinet Industry Forum session at QoMEX 2013 will focus on the emerging technologies such as High Dynamic Range (HDR), 3D Audio/Video (3DA/3DV), and Ultra High Definition (UHD). Both companies and research institutions engaged in the advancement of new imaging technologies are encouraged to participate and present demonstrations of their products and scientific results in an interactive context, with plenty of opportunities for accessing potential collaborators, business partners, and customers.

Prospective exhibitors are invited to submit a demo paper (two-column format, 2 pages + an indication of space requirements for the demostrations) according to the guidelines for short papers available on the conference website.

QIF at QoMEX’13 will feature high quality demonstrations. Accepted demo papers will be included within the QoMEX’13 proceedings and have to be registered and presented; otherwise they will not be included in the IEEE Xplore Library.

QIF 2012 @ Creative Media Days, Ghent, Belgium

Important Dates

• Demo Paper Submission: April 30, 2013
• Notification of Demo Paper Acceptance: May 7, 2013
• Camera-Ready Paper Due: May 15, 2013

Further details about the QIF@QoMEX’13 can found here.

IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing

Special Issue on Perception Inspired Video Processing

Manuscript Submission: 31 Aug 2013, Web | PDF

Video services are demanding a significant and rapidly increasingly fraction of Internet traffic. The ability of traditional approaches to video processing to cope with this data glut are being stretched to the limit, hence new approaches to video processing are necessary to keep up with current and predicted exponential increases in the creation and consumption of video. Perceptual and cognitive factors affect what users experience when they watch video and an understanding of these factors and experiences offers opportunities to achieve the next big leap in video processing. In particular, the knowledge accrued by more than a century of largely unexplored findings form Vision Science research, along with recent breakthroughs in brain imaging, neural computational modeling, and models of users’ Quality of Experience (QoE), provides verdant ground for developing efficient, perceptually optimized video processing paradigms.

We invite original and unpublished research contributions in the following areas:

Perceptual Video Coding: Conventional codecs are typically optimized to improve video signal reproduction at the receiver measured in PSNR rather than reproducing visual experience perceived by humans. We encourage papers on methods that exploit direct models of visual perception as well as cross‐model interactions towards better tradeoff between bit rates and perceived video quality

Quality Evaluation and Enhancement of Processed Video: Traditional objective metrics for video quality may fail to deliver high performance when perceptual optimization is required for tasks such as video denoising, deinterlacing, interpolation, reconstruction, restoration, or video coding. Papers are encouraged that create or apply quality metrics and evaluation methods that take human viewers’ quality of experience into consideration.

Perception‐Driven Video Analysis: Humans process visual information efficiently by directing perceptual and cognitive resources to accomplish specific tasks. Conscious and sub‐conscious processing aids in tasks such as saliency analysis, visual search, and recall. Papers are encouraged that exploit theories of visual perception, visual memory, and high‐level visual processing to improve video search and analysis.

Perception‐Oriented Video Content Creation: Models of human visual perception offer important tools and sound principles for improving the usability and quality of video processing tools used in such increasingly popular and important applications as video content creation, retargeting and summarization. Papers on perception‐driven video content creation methods and systems are encouraged.

3D and Depth Augmented Video Perception and Processing: Given the development of new technologies for sensors and devices that can capture high‐resolution 3D or depth‐enhanced videos, new approaches considering principles of vision are called for in coding, processing and display. Papers that focus on novel formulations and applications, rather than straightforward extensions of conventional 2D techniques, are welcome.

Perceptual Models for Video Processing: We invite papers on new psychophysical techniques and studies, and computational models deriving from them that yield better understanding or modeling of important aspects of video perception, such as spatiotemporal masking, spatiotemporal summation, motion processing, color appearance models, and relationships between neural coding and the statistical properties of natural videos.

Prospective authors should visit http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/periodicals/jstsp/ for information on paper submission. Manuscripts should be submitted at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jstsp-ieee.

Manuscripts will be peer reviewed according to the standard IEEE process.

Guest Editors

Al Bovik, The University of Texas at Austin, USA bovik@ece.utexas.edu

Homer Chen, National Taiwan University, Taiwan homer@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw

Karen Egiazarian, Tampere University of Technology, Finland karen.eguiazarian@tut.fi

Hari Kalva, Florida Atlantic University, USA hari.kalva@fau.edu

Zhou Wang, University of Waterloo, Canada Z.Wang@ece.uwaterloo.ca

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission: 31 Aug 2013

First Review Due: 15 Nov 2013

Revised Manuscript Due: 15 Jan 2014

Second Review: 1 March 2014

Final Manuscript: 1 April 2014

Call for Papers
Fourth International Workshop on Perceptual Quality of Systems
PQS 2013
2-4 September 2013
Vienna, Austria
http://pqs.ftw.at

The fourth international workshop on Perceptual Quality of Systems aims to bring together leading professionals and scientists from different fields that are all related to perceptual quality. Supported by ISCA and the European COST action Qualinet, this event will serve as a forum for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas between both academic and industrial researchers working on different aspects of perceptual quality of systems. Inaugurated in Herne/Mont Cenis (2003) and continued in Berlin (2006) and Bautzen (2010), PQS 2013 will be held in Vienna, Austria.

User perceived quality of technical systems is grounded on human experience and hence a highly complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Thus, any approach to quality assessment and prediction has to take the relevant human perception and judgment factors into account, an issue that has been addressed by a number of scientific disciplines including psychophysics, cognitive psychology, speech and audiovisual quality assessment, human computer interaction (HCI), usability and user experience research, and Quality of Experience (QoE).

Authors are invited to submit extended paper abstracts (1.5-2 pages) until March 31, April 11, 2013 using the guidelines and tools available under the following link:

http://pqs.ftw.at/submission

 Contributions typically refer to methodological aspects of quality and usability assessment and evaluation, the underlying perception and judgment processes, as well as to user perceived quality of particular technologies, systems or services. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Methodologies and Methods of Quality Assessment and Evaluation
• Metrology: Test Design and Scaling
• Quality of Speech, Audio and Music
• Quality of Images and Video
• Quality of Haptics
• Quality of Multimodal and Multi-sensory Perception
• Perceptual Quality vs. Quality of Experience vs. User Experience vs. Usability
• Semio-Acoustics and -Perception
• Quality Engineering Processes
• Quality and Usability of
  • Speech Technology Devices
  • Interactive Telecommunication Systems and Services
  • Multi-Modal User Interfaces
  • Haptic and Olfactory Interfaces
  • Audiovisual, 3D and Virtual Reality Systems

Important Dates:

• Submission (Extended Abstracts): March 31, April 11, 2013
• Notification of acceptance: May 125, 2013
• Camera-ready submission: June 125, 2013

Local Organizing Committee:

Raimund Schatz, FTW
Sebastian Egger, FTW

General Organizing Committee:

Sebastian Möller, TU Berlin
Alexander Raake, TU Berlin
Ercan Altinsoy, TU Dresden
Tobias Hossfeld, University of Würzburg

Technical Program Committee:

Alan Sharpley, Dynastat, USA
Ina Wechsung, Telekom Innovation Laboratories, TU Berlin, Germany
Katrien de Moor, Ghent University, Belgium
Durand Begault, NASA-Ames Research Center, USA
Hans W. Gierlich, HEAD acoustics GmbH, Germany
Jens Blauert, IKA, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
John Beerends, TNO Telecom, The Netherlands
Jonas Braasch, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, USA
Kate Stevens, MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Margret Pinson, NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, Boulder, USA
Norbert Reithinger, DFKI Projektbüro Berlin, Germany
Patrick Le Callet, University of Nantes, France
Peter Svensson, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Ramón López-Cózar Delgado, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Ulrich Heute, DSS, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Germany
Andrew Perkis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Christian Timmerer, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
Jens Berger, SwissQual / Rohde & Schwarz, Switzerland
Ulrich Reiter, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Stefan Winkler, Advanced Digital Sciences Center, Singapore
Akira Takahashi, NTT, Japan
Harilaos Koumaras, NCSR Demokritos, Greece
Tiago Falk, INRS-EMT, Canada

For further information please visit http://pqs.ftw.at

Klagenfurt, March 2013

The QoMEX steering committee invites proponents to submit proposals for the 6th edition of the International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) to be held in 2014. The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together leading professionals and scientists in multimedia quality and user experience from around the world.

The requirements for the proposal submission can be found here:

/qomex2014/

It includes the list of current members of the steering committee as well as information how to submit the proposal.

Proponents are strongly encouraged to present their proposal at the Steering Committee meeting held during QoMEX 2013 in Klagenfurt, Austria (3-5 July, 2013).

The short paper submission system for QoMEX’13 awaits your submissions. All details can be found at the online paper submission site. Please make sure to register and upload your paper until Wednesday 20 Mar 2013 11:59:59pm CET according to the submission deadline.

There’s no separate deadline for registration and actual submission. You may have to create a new user as the submission system for short papers is different from the full paper submission system.

In case of questions, please contact us.

Please note the following final deadlines for the QoMEX’13 full paper submission:

Paper registration deadline: Wednesday 6 Mar 2013 23:59:59 PST. You can register new papers until this deadline.

Paper submission deadline: Sunday 10 Mar 2013 23:59:59 PST. Papers must be submitted by this deadline to be reviewed.

Please note that all papers must be registered prior to submission! Late registration is not possible and no further extensions will be granted.

Online paper submission can be found here.

Dr. Aljosa Smolic joined Disney Research Zurich, Switzerland in 2009, as Senior Research Scientist and Head of the “Advanced Video Technology” group. Before he was Scientific Project Manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI), Berlin, also heading a research group. He has been involved in several national and international research projects, where he conducted research in various fields of video processing, video coding, computer vision and computer graphics and published more than 100 referred papers in these fields. In current projects he is responsible for research in 2D video, 3D video and free viewpoint video processing and coding. He received the Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany in 1996, and the Dr.-Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany, in 2001. Dr. Smolic received the “Rudolf-Urtlel-Award” of the German Society for Technology in TV and Cinema (FKTG) for his dissertation in 2002. He is Area Editor for Signal Processing: Image Communication and served as Guest Editor for the Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE Transactions on CSVT, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, and other scientific journals. He chaired the MPEG ad hoc group on 3DAV pioneering standards for 3D video. In this context he also served as one of the Editors of the Multi-view Video Coding (MVC) standard. Since many years he is teaching full lecture courses on Multimedia Communications and other topics, now at ETH Zurich.