Bullet Comments for 360°Video

Yijun Li, Jin-Chuan Shi, Fang-Lue Zhang, Miao Wang

Abstract: Time-anchored on-screen comments, as known as bullet comments, are a popular feature for online video streaming. Bullet comments reflect audiences’ feelings and opinions at specific video timings, which have been shown to be beneficial to video content understanding and social connection level. In this paper, we for the first time investigate the problem of bullet comment display and insertion for 360° video via head-mounted display and controller. We design four bullet comment display methods and evaluate their effects on 360° video experiences. We further propose two controller-based methods for bullet comment insertion. Combining the display and insertion methods, the user can experience 360° videos with bullet comments, and interactively post new ones by selecting among existing comments. User study results revealed how the factors of display and insertion methods affect 360° video experience. With the experiment findings, we also discuss useful design insights for 360° video bullet comments.