An evaluation of interactive search with modern video players

Klaus Schoeffmann, Claudiu Cobârzan

Abstract: The navigation features of video players are often used for interactive search in videos, when users want to find a specific segment. Especially non-experts make use of these navigation facilities because they typically do not have any video retrieval tool at hand and - maybe more important - the navigation features of video players are very easy to use. However, in order to design professional video browsing tools that allow for better search performance but still provide ease of use, we need to know how users search with common video players. Therefore, we analyze logging data from a user study with 17 participants that performed Known Item Search tasks with an HTML5 video player. We classify search behavior by type of interaction and speed of interactive search and discuss what we can learn for the design and development of professional video search tools.