Video Showcase: Call for Participation

A schedule of all due dates can be found on the Submissions page.

Quick Facts

Required Clip Submission: Upload video at the PCS Submission System by 23 Nov 2011
Clip Feedback from Chairs: 4 Dec 2011
Video Submission: Upload final video at the PCS Submission System by 9 Jan 2012
Conditional Acceptance Notification: 3 Feb 2012, with instructions for one-page description for final submission.
Final Video Deadline: 17 Feb 2012, including a one-page description in Extended Abstract format
Submission Format: H.264 encoded MP4, at least 720px x 480px, at most 5 minutes
Selection process: Juried
At the Conference: CHI fame! Your video will be shown in front of screaming fans at the special Video Showcase session. The Golden Mouse will be awarded to best videos in Oscar-ceremony style at the Video Showcase.
Archives: DVD and ACM Digital Library

Message from the Videos Chairs

The videos track is a forum for human-computer interaction that leaps off the page: vision videos, reflective pieces, humor, novel interfaces, studies, and anything else that is a good match for the moving image and relevant to HCI. Your work will be screened for a large CHI audience during the conference, and in contention for the Golden Mouse award. Videos will be available in the ACM Digital Library after the conference.

Work will be judged on how much it intellectually engages an HCI audience and how effectively it communicates its message. Ultimately, we are looking to put together an enjoyable show for the attendees. Interesting but poorly-produced videos will be scrapped -- but if it's YouTube-ready, it's ready for the videos track!

Michael S. Bernstein, MIT CSAIL
Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University
video@chi2012.acm.org

Video Selection Process

Videos will be reviewed according to two main criteria:

Content: Is the material interesting to human-computer interaction researchers and professionals? The topic of the video is ultimately up to you, but some approaches that have worked well in the past include the following: presentations of research systems, visions of the future, humorous parodies or thoughtful critiques of SIGCHI and HCI, and reports on ethnographic work and user studies. A video's content evaluation depends on how directly it addresses issues of relevance to HCI, and whether its message is interesting and engaging.
Presentation: Is the video edited well? Does it make appropriate use of pacing, music, and special effects? Does it drag on, or will it hold an audience's attention? Because the video showcase is a live screening, we strongly encourage creative editing of your videos. The tight time limit is imposed to keep videos short and punchy. In addition to effective pacing, your video should include appropriate music or soundtrack. Your idea may be brilliant, but if you can't convey it in an engaging way, it will not make a good live video piece.

Videos may be work that has been published or released previously. Please make clear in your submission any prior exposure your video has received.

NEW: Early Clip Submission

This year, we are requiring an early submission of a clip from your video. For academic types, consider this analogous to requiring an abstract of your paper before the deadline. The Videos Chairs will provide feedback on the submission and specify any resulting conditions for revision as the authors work toward final submission.

The clip must be a 60-75 second cut from your video. It is not a trailer: it should not be a mix of final shots that will be in your video, but a 60-75 second contiguous slice of what you will eventually submit. It is also not a rough cut: the clip should be final-submission quality, and indicative of how you plan to edit the rest of the video. Consider this an opportunity to show a small window of what the full video will look like.

The videos Chairs will review all clip submissions, provide feedback, and potentially require specific editing changes be made before the submission deadline. This process will give authors a guided opportunity to improve their video's editing before the submission deadline.

If you are an experienced video editor, you may contact the chairs with examples of your previous work to request an exemption to the early clip submission requirement.

Full Videos and Short Videos

There will be two acceptance categories: Full Videos and Short Videos. Full Videos will be given featured status at the event, will be considered for awards, and will be shown in their entirety. Short Video authors will be required to shorten their submissions to a maximum of 75 seconds to be shown at the event.

Videos will be accepted conditionally. The reviewing committee may ask you to shorten your video further, to improve edits, or otherwise to prepare it for public consumption. You will be given a period of time to revise your video and re-submit a final version for approval and screening at the conference.

Submitting Your Video

Your video must adhere to the following guidelines:

At most five minutes in length, noting that 2-3 minutes is a more common length. Contact the Videos chairs by 12 hours before the submission deadline if you have good reason to request special exemption for the length limit.
Titles and credits totaling no more than ten seconds: showcase your content!
Encoded as an MP4 using the H.264 codec.
Resolution of at least 720px x 480 px. Send as high a resolution copy of your video as possible.
We strongly recommend 16:9 aspect ratio. Encode your video using square pixels for the pixel aspect ratio to avoid your movie looking stretched when projected.
At most 100 MB in file size.

Encoding

We require that you encode your video as an MP4 using the H.264 codec. Most video editing software provides an exporting option to MP4/H.264, for example iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and Final Cut Pro. If you prefer to use free software, x264 can encode any video into H.264.

Third-party material and copyright

It is very important that you have the rights to use all the material that is contained in your submission, including music, video, images, etc. Attaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference. You are encouraged to use Creative Commons content, for example music available at ccMixter.

You will be signing a copyright form allowing us (ACM and SIGCHI) to upload your video into the ACM Digital Library and YouTube or equivalent video-sharing sites as part of the CHI Video collection. As with standard procedures for other ACM publications, authors retain copyright of the material but accepted submissions will only be published or shown at the conference with a signed form permitting ACM to use the content.

The CHI 2012 Video Showcase

Accepted videos will be screened in a special session at CHI 2012. As in the past, we plan to advertise the event heavily, to hand out popcorn and drinks, and to lead up to an awards ceremony for the top submitted videos. Because of the large audience the video showcase attracts, it is one of the best means for getting your message out to the CHI community.

Example Videos

The following videos have won awards in previous years. We encourage you to use them as models for your own work. In addition to enjoying their contents, we encourage video producers to consider them from the point of view of production: their length, lighting, pacing, use of media assets (video, images, sound, text), spatial and temporal compositing, and above all how these production and editing choices are used to tell a story to the CHI audience.

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