Media

Last November 23rd in the MediaLab La Salle of CTMedia a new 3D animation series was presented. The series entitled “Benvinguts a Patatamón!” (Welcome to the potato-world!) is a co-production between Yanquipay and  the Catalan TV.  For the production of this TV series,  Medialab La Salle has produced the complete Mocap (Motion Capture) of the characters. It is the first time that a Catalan production uses 3D mocap for the creation of a complete series of 13 episodes.

Medialab La Salle is a unique infrastructure that consist of a 24 cameras of the award winning Vicon system that provides high quality motion capture that can be used for computer animation, videogames or biomechanics applications, among others.  You may have a look to this video to learn about the process.

Last November 18th 2011, the CTMedia researcher Marc Rovira presented the paper entitled “Transmission of videogames on hybrid platforms“  to the IV Congreso de Televisión Digital Interactiva held in Mallorca. This paper is the result of the Transgame project development jointly with the company Digital Legends Entertainment.

Title:  Transmission of videogames on hybrid TV platforms

Abstract:  In this paper we present a new transmission system of videogames on hybrid interactive TV platforms, combining games that come from broadcast and broadband channels according to user needs and available technology. In fact, the technology developed for this project is based on the HbbTV standard, extending some modules to adapt this standard to TRANSGAME project needs.

CTMedia La Salle is participating in a DVB-T2 field trial in Spain together with Abertis Telecom within the European framework of the ENGINES project. ENGINES is a CELTIC Plus project and has as main objective the validation and development of the DVB-T2 and DVB-NGH technologies.

These are the first trials carried out in Spain with Multi-PLP and SFN and aim to validate the interoperability among different equipment and the performance of the standard especially in mobile and portable scenarios. The network consists of a DVB-T2 Gateway with Multiple-PLP and SFN support and two transmitters (Collserola and Zona Franca).

CTMedia La Salle has provided its DVB-T2 Gateway with support for Multi-PLP and SFN and it has been successfully tested against different modulators (MIER, Teamcast, EGATEL, ENENSYS) and receivers (Teamcast, ENENSYS, SONY). University of the Basque Country has been working on the definition of the test modes and on the measurement process that has been carried out in the area of Barcelona.

CTMedia La Salle will continue its work in DVB-T2 during the coming months by the development of advanced DVB-T2 functionalities (FEF’s, DVB-T2 Lite, …) that will be tested in this framework.

La Salle is participating in a DVB-T2 field trial in Spain together with
Abertis Telecom within the framework of the ENGINES project
(www.it.abo.fi/engines). ENGINES is a CELTIC project and has as main
objective the validation and development of the DVB-T2 and DVB-NGH
technologies. 

These trials are the first carried out in Spain with Multi-PLP and SFN and
aim to validate the interoperability among different equipment and the
performance of the standard especially in mobile and portable scenarios.
The network consists of a DVB-T2 Gateway with Multiple-PLP and SFN support
and two transmitters (Collserola and Zona Franca).

La Salle has provided its DVB-T2 Gateway with support for Multi-PLP and
SFN and it has been tested against different modulators (MIER, Teamcast,
EGATEL, ENENSYS) and receivers (Teamcast, ENENSYS, SONY). Universidad del
Pais Vasco has been working on the definition of the test modes and on the
measurement process that has been carried out in the area of Barcelona.

La Salle will continue its work in DVB-T2 during the coming months by the
development of advanced DVB-T2 functionalities (FEF’s, DVB-T2 Lite, ...)
that will be tested in this framework.

CTMedia researcher Dr. Oriol Guasch has published the paper “A direct transmissibility formulation for experimental statistical energy analysis with no input power measurements” in the Journal of Sound and Vibration.

Complete reference:

Oriol Guasch, “A direct transmissibility formulation for experimental statistical energy analysis with no input power measurements”, Journal of Sound and Vibration, 330 (25), pp. 6223-6236 (2011).

Abstract:

An experimental statistical energy analysis method is proposed that requires neither input power measurements nor strong restrictive hypothesis on the nature of coupling between subsystems. Coupling loss factors are obtained from direct or blocked energy transmissibilities provided that total or internal loss factors are known, for instance, from application of the energy decay rate method. In turn, direct transmissibilities are computed from standard measurable energy transmissibilities, following the ideas of the direct transfer approach to transmission path analysis. The theoretical background of the proposed formulation is presented together with a numerical example to indicate how it could be applied in a practical case.

Link:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022460X11006249

The CTMedia La Salle participated in TECNIACUSTICA 2011, held in Cáceres (Spain), from 26th to 28th October. The event integrated the 42^nd Spanish National Congress on Acoustics, the Iberian Encounter on Acoustics and the European Symposium on Environmental Acoustics and Acoustic Sustainable Buildings.

Pere Artís presented the paper “Experimental analysis and numerical methods applied to transmission path analysis in buildings: VITRASO project”, co-authored with Dr. Oriol Guasch and Carlos García. The paper is an outcome of the VITRASO project that La Salle leads in partnership with FCC, Applus and ICR, among others.

Xavier Valero presented the contribution “Automatic monitoring of environmental noise sources”, co-authored with Dr. Francesc Alías. Xavier also chaired the students and young professionals meeting, organised as satellite event within the congress.

“Experimental analysis and numerical methods applied to transmission path analysis in buildings: VITRASO project”

Experimental as well as numerical methods are usually required to store noise and vibration transmission path problems between sources and receivers in buildings. In this piece of research new experimental methods have been developed based on the direct transmissibility concept. These have been correlated with finite element (FEM), hybrid and statistical energy analysis (SEA) models. All work has been performed in the framework of the VITRASO project, led by FCC and with participation of Applus, ICR, IMAT and La Salle.

“Automatic monitoring of environmental noise sources”

Traditionally, research in the audio recognition field has focused on the analysis of voice and music signals. However, in recent years a growing interest in the recognition of environmental sound has been observed, given its multiple potential applications such as automatic identification of acoustic scenes, their integration into surveillance and security systems or the automatic monitoring of environmental noise sources. This paper deals with the latter application, focusing on the search of acoustic signal descriptors that enable an optimal representation of the different noise sources.

Last September 16th, a new PhD Thesis was presented in the context of the La Salle’s Media Technology research group. The author of this thesis is David Fonseca and the thesis has been advised by professor Dr. Oscar Garcia.

TITLE: User’s Emotional Evaluation of the Architectural Imagery Experience according to the Visualized Environment

SUMMARY:

Throughout history, imagery visualization has extended practically to all fields: painting, photography, medicine or education, are some of the examples that illustrate the importance of imagery in different societies.Previous studies have demonstrated that imagery visualization has implications in the user’s psychological and emotional ambit. Mostly, these studies have focused their efforts in how and to what extent imagery is capable of influencing emotions. In our work, we pretend to go one step further. An image by itself lacks importance without the user who sees, interprets and associates a meaning.

When viewing, we are dependent on factors that influence the emotional creation: the environment in which the image is visualized, the typology, the user, the surroundings where this process occurs, etc. and should have been taken into account at the beginning of the process: the moment when designing the image.

In the empirical way, the data we have obtained, demonstrate how the user, imagery and environment influence the process of generating an emotion. The differences obtained must serve as premises in the designing of the contents so that we are capable of personalizing every element of the study (user, imagery and environment) in order to maximize the empathy of the visual information, in our case, architectural imagery.

KEYWORDS: Photography, Media and Technology, Usability, User Experience, Architecture.

CTMedia researchers Xavier Sevillano, Francesc Alías and Joan Claudi Socoró have published a paper in the Elsevier Journal on “Fuzzy Sets & Systems” under the title: “Positional and confidence voting-based consensus functions for fuzzy cluster ensembles”

Abstract: Consensus clustering, i.e. the task of combining the outcomes of several  clustering systems into a single partition, has lately attracted the  attention of researchers in the unsupervised classification field, as it  allows the creation of clustering committees that can be applied with  multiple interesting purposes, such as knowledge reuse or distributed  clustering. However, little attention has been paid to the development  of algorithms, known as consensus functions, especially designed for  consolidating the outcomes of multiple fuzzy (or soft) clustering  systems into a single fuzzy partition—despite the fact that fuzzy  clustering is far more informative than its crisp counterpart, as it  provides information regarding the degree of association between objects  and clusters that can be helpful for deriving richer descriptive data  models. For this reason, this paper presents a set of fuzzy consensus  functions capable of creating soft consensus partitions by fusing a  collection of fuzzy clusterings. Our proposals base clustering  combination on a cluster disambiguation process followed by the  application of positional and confidence voting techniques. The modular  design of these algorithms makes it possible to sequence their  constituting steps in different manners, which allows to derive versions  of the proposed consensus functions optimized from a computational  standpoint. The proposed consensus functions have been evaluated in  terms of the quality of the consensus partitions they deliver and in  terms of their running time on multiple benchmark data sets. A  comparison against several representative state-of-the-art consensus  functions reveals that our proposals constitute an appealing alternative  for conducting fuzzy consensus clustering, as they are capable of  yielding high quality consensus partitions at a low computational cost.

On-line publication here.

CTMedia La Salle director, Gabriel Fernandez, signed the agreement with the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC) that will allow CTMedia to become full member of the working group on “Loudness differences in TV broadcasting”. The aim of the group is to establish a self-regulation within the local broadcasting industry, by the application of the new recommendation set by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

More information about loudness can be found here

ICME 2011, the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo 2011 was held in La Salle last July. CTMedia researchers made an outstanding job in the organization of the event in La Salle premises.  Conferences and keynotes were outstanding, and we all enjoyed of a good scientific atmosphere. ICME 2011 attracted more than 600 people, in the main conference and the workshops altogether. This is one of the largest attendances to ICME ever.  The statistics of the attendees regarding the country of origin were the following:

We would like to thank those that helped in the organization of the conference. From student volunteers, to management and staff. It was a hard work but we got a good reward… thanks and see you in ICME 2012, Melbourne!

The CTMedia researcher Dr. Xavier Sevillano is currently visiting the Multimedia & Vision Research Group of  Queen Mary University of London. Dr. Sevillano will stay for 5 months working in classification and clustering semantics. More precisely, his work will be focused in one challenge in the framework of the Workshop on Multimedia Evaluation within the Interspeech 2011 conference. The challenge consists in geo-tagging Flickr content from audiovisual and textual data.

This international collaboration lies in the strategy of CTMedia of establishing links with high quality research institutions around the world. CTMedia is a R&D centre specialized on media technologies within the La Salle – Ramon Llull University.