Christian Timmerer discusses improving user experience of multimedia content through immersive future media technologies using sensory effects. Sensory effects are described using MPEG-V and the Sensory Effect Description Language (SEDL) to annotate content and drive devices that can render effects like wind, vibration and scents. An experiment showed that action, sports and documentary content benefited most from sensory effects, improving quality of experience, while news content did not. The goal is to provide users with a unique sensory experience through technologies like those demonstrated.

1. Immersive Future Media TechnologiesSensory Experience Christian Timmerer Klagenfurt University (UNI-KLU)  Faculty of Technical Sciences (TEWI) Department of Information Technology (ITEC)  Multimedia Communication (MMC) http://research.timmerer.com  http://blog.timmerer.com  mailto:christian.timmerer@itec.uni-klu.ac.at Acknowledgments. This work was supported in part by the European Commission in the context of the NoE INTERMEDIA (NoE 038419), the P2P-Next project (FP7-ICT-216217), and the ALICANTE project (FP7-ICT-248652).

2. Motivation Consumption of multimedia content may stimulate also other senses Vision or audition Olfaction, mechanoreception, equilibrioception, thermoception, … Annotation with metadata providing so-called sensory effects that steer appropriate devices capable of rendering these effects … giving her/him the sensation of being part of the particular media ➪ worthwhile, informative user experience

3. Outline Background / Introduction MPEG-V Media Context and Control Sensory Effect Description Language (SEDL) and Sensory Effect Vocabulary (SEV) Software/Hardware components: SEVino, SESim, SEMP, and amBX+SDK Improving the QoE through Sensory Effects ➪ Sensory Experience A Brief Introduction to UME/QoE (UMA/QoS) Results from Subjective Tests Conclusions and Future Work

4. MPEG-V: Media Context and Control System Architecture Pt. 1: Architecture Pt. 2: Control Information Pt. 3: Sensory Information Pt. 4: Virtual World Object Characteristics Pt. 5: Data Formats for Interaction Devices Pt. 6: Common Types and Tools Pt. 7: Conformance and Reference Software http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/working_documents.htm#MPEG-V

5. Sensory Effect Description Language (SEDL) XML Schema-based language for describing sensory effects Basic building blocks to describe, e.g., light, wind, fog, vibration, scent MPEG-V Part 3, Sensory Information Adopted MPEG-21 DIA tools for adding time information (synchronization) Actual effects are not part of SEDL but defined within the Sensory Effect Vocabulary (SEV) Extensibility: additional effects can be added easily w/o affecting SEDL Flexibility: each application domain may define its own sensory effects Description conforming to SEDL :== Sensory Effect Metadata (SEM) May be associated to any kind of multimedia content (e.g., movies, music, Web sites, games) Steer sensory devices like fans, vibration chairs, lamps, etc. via an appropriate mediation device ➪ Increase the experience of the user ➪ Worthwhile, informative user experience

6. Sensory Effect Description Language (cont’d) SEM ::=[DescriptionMetadata](Declarations|GroupOfEffects|Effect|ReferenceEffect)+ Declarations ::= (GroupOfEffects|Effect|Parameter)+ GroupOfEffects ::= timestamp EffectDefinitionEffectDefinition (EffectDefinition)* Effect ::= timestamp EffectDefinition EffectDefinition ::= [activate][duration][fade][alt] [priority][intensity][location] [adaptability]

7. Sensory Effect Vocabulary (SEV) Extensibility: additional effects can be added easily w/o affecting SEDL Flexibility: each application domain may define its own sensory effects Sensory Effects Light, colored light, flash light Temperature Wind Vibration Water sprayer Scent Fog Color correction Rigid body motion Passive kinesthetic motion Passive kinesthetic force Active kinesthetic Tactile

8. Example <sedl:GroupOfEffectssi:pts="3240000" duration="100" fade="15" position="urn:mpeg:mpeg-v:01-SI-PositionCS-NS:center:*:front"> <sedl:Effectxsi:type="sev:WindType" intensity="0.0769"/> <sedl:Effectxsi:type="sev:VibrationType" intensity="0.56"/> <sedl:Effectxsi:type="sev:LightType" intensity="0.0000077"/> </sedl:GroupOfEffects>

9. SEVino, SESim, SEMP, and amBX Annotation Tool: SEVino Simulator: SESim Player: SEMP amBX (Ambient Experience) system + SDK Two fan devices, a wrist rumbler, two sound speakers, a subwoofer, two lights, and a wall washer Everything controlled by SEM descriptionsexcept light effect

10. Quality of Experience Factors impacting Quality of Experience Network Device Content Format Technical Factors Quality of Experience (QoE) Context TaskApplication User Social andPsychological Factors Environment User Expectation Content T. Ebrahimi, “Quality of Multimedia Experience: Past, Present and Future”, Keynote at ACM Multimedia 2009, Beijing, China, Oct 22, 2009. http://www.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/qoe

11. Quality of Experience Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) Anywhere, anytime, any device + technically feasible Main focus on devices and network connectivity issues ➪ QoS Universal Multimedia Experience (UME) Take the user into account ➪ QoE Multimedia Adaptation and Quality Models/Metrics Single modality (i.e., audio, image, or video only) or a simple combination of two modalities (i.e., audio and video) Triple user characterization model Sensorial, e.g., sharpness, brightness Perceptual, e.g., what/where is the content Emotional, e.g., feeling, sensation Ambient Intelligence Add’llight effects are highly appreciated for both audio and visual content Calls for a scientific framework to capture, measure, quantify, judge, and explain the user experience B. de Ruyter, E. Aarts. “Ambient intelligence: visualizing the future”, Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, New York, NY, USA, 2004, pp. 203–208. E. Aarts, B. de Ruyter, “New research perspectives on Ambient Intelligence”, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, IOS Press, vol. 1, no. 1, 2009, pp. 5–14. F. Pereira, “A triple user characterization model for video adaptation and quality of experience evaluation,” Proc. of the 7th Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing, Shanghai, China, October 2005, pp. 1–4.

12. Experiment: Goal & Setup Aim: demonstrate that sensory effects is a vital tool for enhancing the user experience depending on the actual genre Tools Sensory Effect Media Player (SEMP) Test sequences annotated with sensory effects: action (Rambo 4, Babylon A.D.), news (ZIB Flash), documentary (Earth), commercials (Woist Klaus), and sports (Formula 1) Double Stimulus Impairment Scale (DSIS) also known as Degradation Category Rating (DCR) Five-level impairment scale ➪ new five-level enhancement scale Procedure First, show reference sequence w/o sensory effects Second, the same sequence enriched with sensory effects with a two second break in between Finally, subjects to rate the overall opinion of the audio/video resource and sensory effect quality

13. Experiment: Results

14. Conclusions Sensory effects is a vital tool for enhancing the user experience leading to a unique, worthwhile Sensory Experience Action, sports, and documentary genres benefit more from these additional effects Rambo 4 and Babylon A.D. are from the same genre, the results differ slightly Commercial genre can also profit from the additional effects but not at the same level as documentary News genre will not profit from these effects Interoperability through MPEG-V (ISO/IEC 23005)

15. Acknowledgments EC projects for funding this activity NoE INTERMEDIA (NoE 038419) http://intermedia.miralab.ch/ P2P-Next project (FP7-ICT-216217) http://www.p2p-next.eu ALICANTE project (FP7-ICT-248652) http://www.ict-alicante.eu COST ICT Action IC1003 QUALINET – European Network on Qualityof Experience in Multimedia Systems and Services Markus Waltl for implementing, preparing, conducting, evaluating almost all the experiments Benjamin Rainer for implementing the Firefox plug-in + WWW tests Hermann Hellwagner for his advice and feedback ISO/IEC MPEG and its participating members for their constructive feedback during the standardization process

16. References Markus Waltl, Christian Timmerer, Hermann Hellwagner, “A Test-Bed for Quality of Multimedia Experience Evaluation of Sensory Effects”, Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2009), San Diego, USA, July 29-31, 2009. C. Timmerer, J. Gelissen, M. Waltl, and H. Hellwagner, “Interfacing with Virtual Worlds”, Proceedings of the NEM Summit 2009, Saint-Malo, France, September 28-30, 2009. M. Waltl, Enriching Multimedia with Sensory Effects, VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, February, 2010. M. Waltl, C. Timmerer and H. Hellwagner, “Increasing the User Experience of Multimedia Presentations with Sensory Effects”, Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS’10), Desenzano del Garda, Italy, April 12-14, 2010. C. Timmerer, M. Waltl, and H. Hellwagner, “Are Sensory Effects Ready for the World Wide Web?”, Proceedings of the Workshop on Interoperable Social Multimedia Applications (WISMA 2010), Barcelona, Spain, May 19-20, 2010. M. Waltl, C. Timmerer, and H. Hellwagner, “Improving the Quality of Multimedia Experience through Sensory Effects”, Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX2010), Trondheim, Norway, June 21-23, 2010. M. Waltl, C. Raffelsberger, C. Timmerer, and H. Hellwagner, “Metadata-based Content Management and Sharing System for Improved User Experience”, Proc. of the 4th InterMedia Open Forum (IMOF 2010), Palma de Mallorca, Spain, September 1, 2010.

17. Thank you for your attention ... questions, comments, etc. are welcome … Ass.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Christian Timmerer Klagenfurt University, Department of Information Technology (ITEC) Universitätsstrasse 65-67, A-9020 Klagenfurt, AUSTRIA christian.timmerer@itec.uni-klu.ac.at http://research.timmerer.com/ Tel: +43/463/2700 3621 Fax: +43/463/2700 3699 © Copyright: Christian Timmerer