Finding a needle in a haystack: an interactive video archive explorer for professional video searchers

Mieke Haesen, Jan Meskens, Kris Luyten, Karin Coninx, Jan Hendrik Becker, Tinne Tuytelaars, Gert-Jan Poulisse, Phi The Pham, Marie-Francine Moens

Abstract: Professional video searchers typically have to search for particular video fragments in a vast video archive that contains many hours of video data. Without having the right video archive exploration tools, this is a difficult and time consuming task that induces hours of video skimming. We propose the video archive explorer, a video exploration tool that provides visual representations of automatically detected concepts to facilitate individual and collaborative video search tasks. This video archive explorer is developed by employing a user-centred methodology, which ensures that the tool is more likely to fit to the end user needs. A qualitative evaluation with professional video searchers shows that the combination of automatic video indexing, interactive visualisations and user-centred design can result in an increased usability, user satisfaction and productivity.