Help Research Project on Video Search -- searching through the Buffy Season 5 storyline

[QuasiState]

Hi
We are working on a Video Search system which scans through multiple episodes of a TV series, and allows users to search for specific events or scenes in the storyline. As a start and considering the popularity of Buffy, we have chosen the season 5 as a test bed.

We ask your assistance in gathering a list of queries which depict parts of the story specifically from season 5.

For example below are a few starter queries. Imagine that you enter this in a google-like search box and get back a list of results corresponding to matching scenes from among the 22 episodes of the season.

"buffy sees joyce lying on the sofa"
"spike kills chinese slayer"
"buffy learns the truth about dawn"
"she saved the world, a lot"
"the watcher's council tests buffy"
"riley leaves sunnydale"
"dawn resurrects joyce"
"buffy fights dracula"

We would be grateful if you guys can contribute many more such queries to test our system more rigorously. We ask this from you to make sure our search system is not biased towards our knowledge of its internal workings. Re-worded queries are also encouraged, since that is to be expected from different users.

All contributions will be used anonymously and strictly in a non-commercial, academic setting.

Thanks in advance!

 

[fredthe3rd]

Sounds intriguing...

How about to test something with multiple results and with various wording:

"Buffy kills a vampire"
"Buffy slays a vampire"
"Buffy dusts a vampire"

or does it need to be relating to one specific event? Does every scene need to be tagged with keywords? It sounds like a massive undertaking!

 

[Buffy Summers]

You really should ask permission before you use someone else's site for your research, especially when you are not already a member there.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

QuasiState,
firstly it is polite to make sure the person who runs the board knows of your proposal.
If permission is given, you could say where the answers are going to be used, as in what country and what part of the country? Is it for a school project or a new website?

Your first few opening statements might make sense to you but this will be read by people around the world, many of whom could read what you have written and wonder if there is a question.
You state.
For example here are a few starter queries.

A few starter queries?..... How many are there in all?

Imagine that you enter this in a google-like search box (what is one of them? I don't use google) and get back a list of results corresponding to matching scenes from among the 22 episodes of the season.

What matching scenes?
Did you mean Buffy finds Joyce lying on the sofa, or are you referring to Buffy finds Joyce (her mother) lying dead on the sofa?
Please note Buffy is a name and names have a capital letter.
Then there are the statements by you.....
We ask your assistance in gathering a list of queries which depicts parts of the story specifically from season 5.
? That does sound odd, you want a list of queries (questions) which depicts parts of the story ?

 

[fredthe3rd]

I don't think Quasi had any ill intention. If I had to do research on a subject I would probably go to a relevant forum and not expect to have to ask permission.

If you set up a forum (and you have set up a fantastic forum) don't you sort of hand it over to the people? Obviously if people post nasty comments someone needs to step in but is this harmful?

Please don't respond to this post frostily, probably there is a valid reason that I haven't considered. But I don't think the OP was being rude or anything.

I'm going to cower in the corner now and hope I haven't annoyed anyone.

 

[Buffy Summers]

It's not about doing harm, it's just about politeness. (If I thought it was harmful, I would have deleted it.) When someone posts here to do their research, etc, it takes up space on my server and bandwith that I pay for. If someone wants to use my resources for their own purposes - especially when it's not someone who regularly contributes here - it is rude not to ask permission first.

I wouldn't have said no, but I think it's worth pointing out to them for the future.

It doesn't apply in this particular case, but when personal information is involved, it is absolutely my business to protect the information of my members. Again, doesn't apply in this particular case, but when people are doing research projects about message boards and they want to use info from here, it does affect me with regards to what information is put out there about my site (positive, negative etc).

I've never told someone no (other than people who wanted to sell things, which we don't allow) but it's just the right thing to do to ask.

If you set up a forum don't you sort of hand it over to the people?

I disagree with this, because the purpose of the board is for the members to discuss Buffy, not to help people with research projects.

Again, it's fine, and the members here are nice and happy to help people out. BUT if you are asking for help for something personal to you, rather than what the site is designed for, you should ask permission first.

 

[fredthe3rd]

I didn't realise, and I don't think most people will, that you have to pay for this site. If I'd stopped to think about it I might have expected that you ask for donations once a year. (I would contribute if asked by the way)

Either way I definitely owe you a massive and long overdue THANK YOU!!!

it seems very frequent that people appear on this website with this sort of thing, and maybe they don't realise they're doing anything wrong (I don't think there's any standard code of conduct for forums on the Internet. But as I'm writing this I'm thinking 'well there's probably something on the introduction thread that I never bothered reading and that maybe I should just keep my silly trap shut. So that's what I'll do.

(Except to say I'll be worrying how much I'm costing you every time I post now!

 

[Buffy Summers]

it seems very frequent that people appear on this website with this sort of thing, and maybe they don't realise they're doing anything wrong

That's why I mention it when people do post, because most people don't think about it.

🙂

 

[fredthe3rd]

That's why I mention it when people do post, because most people don't think about it.

🙂

But if its always new people then they'll never have seen such a post. It's like you're trapped in a never ending cycle!

---------- Post added at 08:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:52 PM ----------

Well that's truly selfless.

 

[QuasiState]

[MENTION=2739]Buffy Summers[/MENTION]: I apologize for not asking permission first prior to posting. Indeed, I was not considering the bandwidth / server usage that this will be costing you. I chose this forum for two reasons: 1) because it was at the top of the table in Google search, and 2) the recent activity looked good on it. Thanks and congratulations for that! I have not and do not intend to cross post this request on multiple forums if they exist.

[MENTION=7336]ILLYRIAN[/MENTION] (and all):
Let me clarify a bit more on what we are trying to do. We are a university in Germany and conduct research on using video processing for multimedia applications, e.g. understanding the content of a video by letting the computer "watch" it. In a little more detail, the use-case of the project is something like this: Imagine you have a Media Center with your favourite TV series. You now wish to search within this large collection for one of your favourite scenes. The goal of this project is to facilitate this! You just enter a few words depicting the scene and we try to find it based on video processing.

We are now looking for such queries that someone would enter into such a system to find specific scenes / plot events. The usage of the word "starter" was my bad. I just meant them as example queries to give an idea what such queries could look like. These queries will be used to evaluate our research in terms of how well our system can find the specific scenes in the videos.

About the number of queries, this can be very large and different as they are clearly subjective. In fact the subjectivity is why we turn to you for help! We feel if we only make up queries ourselves, we would be very biased to a certain view point, which we want to avoid for a fair evaluation of our system.

[MENTION=12255]fredthe3rd[/MENTION]: Thanks for the support. The query "Buffy kills a vampire" and its versions is spot on. However, we are also trying to obtain queries which relate more towards the storyline (see examples) and specific events, within season 5. Thanks once again.

[MENTION=2739]Buffy Summers[/MENTION]: I am sorry for all the confusion, still if you feel that I overstepped my bounds then feel free to delete this post.

 

[Buffy Summers]

I am sorry for all the confusion, still if you feel that I overstepped my bounds then feel free to delete this post.

Like I said, if it had been a problem I would have deleted it already. I just mentioned it for your future knowledge.

No worries and good luck with the project. 🙂

 

[Black Eye Guy]

I agree with all the stuff that been said and usually like to know more information so thanks Illyrian.

Sounds like an interesting project, are you guys fans of the show? Do you know the scenes when we mention them without a episode reference?

"Dawns first appearance"
"Tara casts a spell on the group"
"Spike gets his jacket"
"Riley gets bitten by a vampire"
"Riley leaves Buffy"
"Willow summons a troll"
"The Watchers come to Sunnydale"
"The Watchers revel what Glory is"
"Dawn find out she's the key"
"Willow teleports Glory away"
"Dawn sees her moms body"
"Angel and Buffy in the graveyard"
"Buffy and The First Slayer in the desert"
"Tara gets her mind sucked"
"Willow goes black-eyed"
"Willow uses dark magic"
"Buffy fights Glory"
"Buffy fights horsemen on moving bus"
"Willow makes a force field"
"Dawn gets captured"
"Xander and Spike fight Doc"
"Buffy slays a vampire that doesn't know her"
"All the scoobies in the Magic box"
"Glory kicks Buffys head off"
"Buffy fights Glory with a troll hammer"
"Xander hits Glory with a wrecking ball"
"Willow fixes Tara"
"Buffy sacrifices herself"
"Buffys grave"

 

[QuasiState]

Thanks a lot [MENTION=5973]Black Eye Guy[/MENTION]. That is exactly the kind of stuff we are looking for. Yes, the series is really good, and season 5 probably the best. I have watched the entire season multiple times now, for fun, for work, and once in detail (frame-by-frame) for annotating some information manually too! I think we will not need the episode references, and should be able to find out where the scene occurs for the final evaluation of the search task. In fact, it might also be interesting to compare how much time a human would take to find the correct scene in comparison to a computer! 🙂

 

[ILLYRIAN]

QuasiState,
you mention about doing a frame by frame detailed search, bearing that in mind have you considered making a list of all the bloopers and continuity errors?
The two scenes that I spent most time on were:
When Buffy comes out of the principals office (Bob Flutie) when she first went to Sunnydale high, there is at least 12 continuity errors in the corridor scene.
Also when Warren shot Tara, the view of Xander and Buffy chatting on the bench seat in the garden, a frame by frame view shows a member of the crew going behind the seat. Don't bother trying to make sense of the angle from where Warren was to where Tara was, and ask how did the bullet hit her; just for fun you could ask how many takes did the scene where Tara's blood being splattered on Willow's top had to be re-shot. (Of how the blood splatter was done, person blowing red stuff out of a straw, as each time it wasn't good enough the top had to be washed and dried as they didn't have enough tops).
As for who is quicker, a person or a computer. If the person doesn't know the answer and doesn't ask the computer. Then the computer could be hours or even days quicker.

 

[QuasiState]

Continuity is something interesting too and quite easy to catch using a computer. In fact there has already been some work on this by a lab at University of Oxford, UK. Unfortunately I cannot post external links here yet, so this might be some work (replace [dot] by .) www[dot]robots[dot]ox[dot]ac[dot]uk/~vgg/research/continuity/